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FROM THE AUTHOR, TO THE AMERICAN EDITOR 
OF HIS WORKS. 

[Published, by James R. Osgood & Co., successors to Ticknor anb Fields.] 

These papers I am anxious to put into the hands of your 
house, and, so far as regards the U. S., of your house exclu- 
sively ; not with any view to further emolument, but as an 
acknowledgment of the services which you have already ren- 
dered me ; namely, first, in having brought together so widely 
scattered a collection, — a -difficulty which in my own hands 
by too painful an experience I had found from nervous de- 
pression to be absolutely insurmountable ; secondly, in hav- 
ing made me a participator in the pecuniary profits of the 
American edition, without solicitation or the shadow of any 
expectation on my part, without any legal claim that I could 
plead, or equitable warrant in established usage, solely and 
merely upon your own spontaneous motion. Some of these 
new papers, I hope, will not be without their value in the 
eyes of those who have taken an interest in the original 
series. But at aU events, good or bad, they are now ten- 
dered to the appropriation of your individual house, the 
Messrs. Ticknor and Fields, according to the amplest 
extent of any power to make such a transfer that I may be 
found to possess by law or custom in America. 

I wish this transfer were likely to be of more value. But 
the veriest trifle, interpreted by the spirit in which I offer it, 
may express my sense of the liberality manifested throughout 
this transaction by your honorable house. 
Ever believe me, my dear sir, 

Your faithful and obliged, 

THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 



Be Huinccg's UJoife. 

AUTHOR'S LIBRARY EDITION. 

THE NOTE-BOOK 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, 



AND 



MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 




BOSTON : 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 
1873- 



r^ 



j,b 



.-3^ 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by 

TICKNOE AND FIELDS, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetta 



THE NOTE-BOOK 



ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 



becjuest 

RT. REV- J1-1L1U3 W. ATWaOD 
JUNE 5, 1945 



CONTENTS. 

Pt;. 

Three Memorable Murders ... 1 

True Relations of the Bible to merely Human Science 72 

LiTERART History of the Eighteenth Century ... 81 

The Antigone of Sophocles . 137 

The Marquess Wellesley 177 

Milton vs. Southey and Landor 193 

Falsification of English History 217 

A Peripatetic Philosopher 241 

On Suicide 260 

Superficial Knowledge 267 

English Diction.vbies 274 

Dryden's Hexastich 281 

Pope's Retort upon Addison 286 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

A SEQUEL TO 

•MURDER CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS.'* 

[1854.] 

It is impossible to conciliate readers of so saturnine 
and gloomy a class, that they cannot enter with genial 
sympathy into any gaiety whatever, but, least of all, 
when the gaiety trespasses a little into the province of 
the extravagant. In such a case, not to symparthize ia 
not to understand ; and the playfulness, which is not 
relished, becomes flat and insipid, or absolutely with- 
out meaning. Fortunately, after all such churls have 
withdrawn from my audience in high displeasure, there 
remains a large majority who are loud in acknowledg- 
ing the amusement which they have derived from a 
former paper of mine, ' On Murder considered as one 
of the Fine Arts ; ' at the same time proving the sin- 
cerity of their praise by one hesitating expression of 
censure. Repeatedly they have suggested to me, that 
perhaps the extravagance, though clearly intentional, 
and forming one element in the general gaiety of the 

♦ See ' Miscellaneous Essays,' p. 17. 



li THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

conception, went too far. I am not myself of that 
opinion ; and I beg to remind these friendly censors, 
that it is amongst the direct purposes and efforts of this 
bagatelle to graze the brink of horror, and of all that 
would in actual realization be most repulsive. The 
very excess of the extravagance, in fact, by suggesting 
to the reader continually the mere aeriality of the 
entire speculation, furnishes the surest means of dis- 
enchanting him from the horror which might else 
gather upon his feelings. Let me remind such ob- 
jectors, once for all, of Dean Swift's proposal for 
turning to account the supernumerary infants of the 
three kingdoms, which, in those days, both at Dublin 
and at London, were provided for in foundling hospitals, 
by cooking and eating them. This was an extrava- 
ganza, though really bolder and more coarsely practical 
than mine, which did not provoke any reproaches even 
to a dignitary of the supreme Irish church ; its own 
monstrosity was its excuse ; mere extravagance was 
felt to license and accredit the little jeu cfesprit, 
precisely as the blank impossibilities of Lilliput, of 
Laputa, of the Yahoos, &c., had licensed those. If, 
therefore, any man thinks it worth his while to tilt 
against so mere a foam-bubble of gaiety as this lecture 
on the {Esthetics of murder, I shelter myself for the 
moment under the Telamonian shield of the Dean. 
But, in reality, my own little paper may plead a 
privileged excuse for its extravagance, such as is alto- 
gether wanting to the Dean's. Nobody can pretend, 
for a moment, on behalf of the Dean, that there- is any 
ordinary and natural tendency in human thoughts, 
which could ever turn to infants as articles of diet 
under any conceivable circumstances, this would be 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 3 

felt as the most aggravated form of cannibalism — 
cannibalism applying itself to the most defenceless 
part of the species. But, on the other hand, the ten- 
dency to a critical or aesthetic valuation of fires and 
murders is universal. If you are summoned to the 
spectacle of a great fire, undoubtedly the first impulse 
is — to assist in putting it out. But that field of ex- 
ertion is very limited, and is soon filled by regular 
professional people, trained and equipped for the ser- 
vice. In the case of a fire which is operating upon 
private property, pity for a neighbor's calamity checks 
us at first in treating the affair as a scenic spectacle. 
But perhaps the fire may be confined to public build- 
ings. And in any case, after we have paid our tribute 
of regret to the affair, considered as a calamity, in- 
evitably, and without restraint, we go on to consider it 
as a stage spectacle. Exclamations of — How grand ! 
how magnificent ! arise in a sort of rapture from the 
crowd. For instance, when Drury Lane was burned 
down in the first decennium of this century, the falling 
in of the roof was signalized by a mimic suicide of the 
protecting Apollo that surmounted and crested the 
centre of this roof. The god was stationary with his 
lyre, and seemed looking down upon the fiery ruins 
that were so rapidly approaching him. Suddenly the 
supporting timbers below him gave way ; a convulsive 
heave of the billowing flames seemed for a moment to 
raise the statue ; and then, as if on some impulse oJ 
despair, the presiding deity appeared not to fall, but to 
throw himself into the fiery deluge, for he went down 
head foremost ; and in all respects, the descent had 
the air of a voluntary act. What followed ? From 
every one of the bridges over the river, and from other 



4 THREE MEBIORABLE MURDERS. 

open areas which commanded the spectacle, there 
arose a sustained uproar of admiration and sympathy. 
Some few years before this event, a prodigious fire 
occurred at Liverpool ; the Goree, a vast pile of ware- 
houses close to one of the docks, was burned to the 
ground. The huge edifice, eight or nine stories high, 
and laden with most combustible goods, many thousand 
bales of cotton, wheat and oats in thousands of quar- 
ters, tar, turpentine, rum, gunpowder, &c., continued 
through many hours of darkness to feed this tremendous 
fire. To aggravate the calamity, it blew a regular gale 
of wind ; luckily for the shipping, it blew inland, that 
is, to the east ; and all the way down to Warrmgton, 
eighteen miles distant to the eastward, the whole air 
was illuminated by flakes of cotton, often saturated 
with rum, and by what seemed absolute worlds of 
blazing sparks, that lighted up all the upper chambers 
of the air. All the cattle lying abi-oad in the fields 
through a breadth of eighteen miles, were thrown into 
terror and agitation. Men, of course, read in this 
hurrying overhead of scintillating and blazing vortices, 
the annunciation of some gigantic calamity going on in 
Liverpool ; and the lamentation on that account was 
universal. But that mood of public sympathy did not 
at all interfere to suppress or even to check the 
momentary bursts of rapturous admiration, as this 
arrowy sleet of many-colored fire rode on the wings 
of hurricane, alternately through open depths of air, or 
through dark clouds overhead. 

Precisely the same treatment is applied to murders 
After the first tribute of sorrow to those who havi- 
perished, but, at all events, after the personal interests 
have been tranquillized by time, inevitably the scenical 



THREE MEMOEABLE MaRDEES. 5' 

features (what aesthetically may be called the com- 
parative advantages) of the several murders are re- 
viewed and valued. One murder is compared with 
another ; and the circumstances of superiority, as, for 
example, in the incidence and effects of surprise, of 
mystery, &c., are collated and appraised. I, there- 
fore, for 7ny extravagance, claim an inevitable and 
perpetual ground in the spontaneous tendencies of the 
human mind when left to itself. But no one will 
pretend that any corresponding plea can be advanced 
on behalf of Swift. 

In this important distinction between myself and the 
Dean, lies one reason which prompted the present writ- 
ing. A second purpose of this paper is, to make the 
reader acquainted circumstantially with three memo- 
rable cases of murder, which long ago the voice of 
amateurs has crowned with laurel, but especially 
with the two earliest of the three, viz., the immortal 
Williams' murders of 1812. The act and the actor 
are each separately in the highest degree interesting ; 
and, as forty-two years have elapsed since 1812, it can- 
not be supposed that either is known circumstantially to 
the men of the current generation. 

Never, throughout the annals of universal Christen- 
dom, has there indeed been any act of one solitary 
insulated individual, armed with power so appalling 
over the hearts of men, as that exterminating murder, 
by which, during the winter of 1812, John Williams in 
one hour, smote two houses with emptiness, extermin- 
ated all but two entire households, and asserted his own 
supremacy above all the children of Cain. It would be 
absolutely impossible adequately to describe the frenzy 
of feelings which, throughout the next fortnight, mas 



6 THREE MKMOKABLE MURDERS. 

tered the popular heart ; the mere deUrium of indignant 
horror in some, the mere delirium of panic in others. 
For twelve succeeding days, under some groundless 
notion that the unknown murderer had quitted London, 
the panic which had convulsed the mighty metropolis 
diffused itself all over the island. I was myself at that 
time nearly three hundred miles from London ; but 
there, and everywhere, the panic was indescribable. 
One lady, my next neighbor, whom personally I knew, 
living at the moment, during the absence of her hus- 
band, with a few servants in a veiy solitary house, 
never rested until she had placed eighteen doors (so she 
told me, and, indeed, satisfied me by ocular proof), each 
secured by ponderous bolts, and bars, and chains, be- 
tween her own bedroom and any intruder of human 
build. To reach her, even in her drawing-room, was 
like going, as a flag of truce, into a beleaguered for- 
tress ; at every sixth step one was stopped by a sort of 
portcullis. The panic was not confined to the rich , 
women in the humblest ranks more than once died upon 
the spot, from the shock attending some suspicious at- 
tempts at intrusion upon the part of vagrants, meditating 
probably nothing worse than a robbery, but whom the 
poor women, misled by the London newspapers, had 
fancied to be the dreadful London murderer. Mean- 
time, this solitary artist, that rested in the centre of 
London, self-supported by his own conscious grandeur, 
as a domestic Attila, or ' scourge of God ;' this man, 
that walked in darkness, and relied upon murder (as 
afterwards transpired) for bread, for clothes, for pro- 
motion in life, was silently preparing an effectual answer 
to the public journals ; and on the twelfth day after his 
maugural murder, he advertised his presence in Lon» 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 7 

don, and published to all men the absurdity of ascribing 
to him any ruralizing propensities, by striking a second 
blow, and accomplishing a second family extermination. 
Somewhat lightened was the provincial panic by this 
proof that the murderer had not condescended to sneak 
into the country, or to abandon for a moment, under 
any motive of caution or fear, the great metropolitan 
castra stativa of gigantic crime, seated for ever on the 
Thames. In fact, the great artist disdained a provincial 
reputation ; and he must have felt, as a case of ludicrous 
disproportion, the contrast between a country town or 
village, on the one hand, and, on the other, a work 
more lasting than brass — a zT>,,i(a i? an — a murder such 
in quality as any murder that he would condescend to 
own for a work turned out from his own studio. 

Coleridge, whom I saw some months after these 
terrific murders, told me, that, for his part, though at 
the time resident in London, he had not shared in the 
prevailing panic ; him they effected only as a philoso- 
pher, and threw him into a profound reverie upon the 
tremendous power which is laid open in a moment to 
any man who can reconcile himself to the abjuration 
of all conscientious restraints, if, at the same time, 
thoroughly without fear. Not sharing in the public 
panic, however, Coleridge did not consider that panic 
at all unreasonable; for, as he said most truly in that 
vast metropolis there are many thousands of households, 
composed exclusively of women and children ; many 
other thousands there are who necessarily confide their 
safety, in the long evenings, to the discretion of a young 
servant girl ; and if she suffers herself to be beguiled 
by the pretence of a message from her mother, sister, 
or sweetheart, into opening the door, there, in one 



8 THREE BIEMORABLE MURDERS. 

second of time, goes to wreck the security of the house 
However, at that time, and for many months afterwards, 
the practice of steadily putting the chain upon the door 
before it was opened prevailed generally, and for a long 
time served as a record of that deep impression left 
upon London by Mr. Williams. Southey, 1 may add, 
entered deeply into the public feeling on this occasion, 
and said to me, within a week or two of the first mur- 
der, that it was a private event of that order which rose 
to the dignity of a national event.* But now^, having 
prepared the reader to appreciate on its true scale this 
dreadful tissue of murder (which as a record belonging 
to an era that is now left forty-two years behind us, not 
one person in four of this generation can be expected 
to know correctly), let me pass to the circumstantial 
details of the affair. 

^et, first of all, one word as to the local scene of the 
murders. Ratcliffe Highway is a public thoroughfare 
in a most chaotic quarter of eastern or nautical London ; 
and at this time (viz., in 1812), when no adequate 
police existed except the detective police of Bow Street, 
admirable for its own peculiar purposes, but utterly in- 
commensurate to the general service of the capital, it 
was a most dangerous quarter. Every third man at 
the least might be set down as a foreigner. Lascars 
Chinese, Moors, Negroes, were met at every step. 
And apart from the manifold ruffianism, shrouded im- 
penetrably under the mixed hats and turbans of men 
whose past was untraceable to any European eye, it is 

* I am not sure whether Southey held at this time his appoint' 
ment to the editorship of the ' Edinburgh Annual Register.' If 
he did, no aoubt in the domestic section of that chronicle will b« 
found an excellent accoimt of the whole. 



IflREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. "9 

well known that the navy (especially, in time of war, 
the commercial navy) of Christendom is the sure 
receptacle of all the murderers and ruffians whose 
crimes have given them a motive for withdrawing 
themselves for a season from the public eye. It is 
true, that few of this class are qualified to act as ' able ' 
seamen : but at all times, and especially during war, 
only a small pi'oportion (or nucleus) of each ship's 
company consists of such men: the large majority 
being mere untutored landsmen. John Williams, how- 
ever, who had been occasionally rated as a seaman on 
board of various Indiamen, &c., was probably a very 
accomplished seaman. Pretty generally, in fact, he 
was a ready and adroit man, fertile in resources under 
all sudden difficulties, and most flexibly adapting him- 
self to all varieties of social life. Williams was a man 
of middle stature (five feet seven and a-half, to five feet 
eight inches high), slenderly built, rather thin, but wiry, 
tolerably muscular, and clear of all superfluous flesh. 
A lady, who saw him under examination (I think at the 
Thames Police Office), assured me that his hair was 
of the most extraordinary and vivid color, viz., bright 
yellow, something between an orange and lemon color. 
Williams had been in India ; chiefly in Bengal and 
Madras : but he had also been upon the Indus. Now, 
it is notorious that, in the Punjaub, horses of a high 
caste are often painted — crimson, blue, green, purple ; 
and it struck me that Williams might, for some casual 
purpose of disguise, have taken a hint from this prac- 
tice of Scinde and Lahore, so that the color might not 
have been natural. In other respects, his appearance 
was natural enough ; and, judging by a plaster cast of 
him, which I purchased in London, I should say mean, 



10 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

as regaroed his facial structure. One fact, however, 
was striking, and fell in with the impression of his 
natural tiger character, that his face wore at all times 
a bloodless ghastly pallor. 'You might imagine,' 
said my informant, ' that in his veins circulated not 
(•ed life-blood, such as could kindle into the blush of 
shame, of wrath, of pity — but a green sap that welled 
from no human heart.' His eyes seemed frozen and 
glazed, as if their light were all converged upon some 
victim lurking in the far background. So far his ap- 
pearance might have repelled ; but, on the other hand» 
the concurrent testimony of many witnesses, and also 
the silent testimony of facts, showed that the oiliness 
and snaky insinuation of his demeanor counteracted the 
repulsiveness of his ghastly face, and amongst inex- 
perienced young women won for him a very favorable 
reception. In particular, one gentle-mannered girl, 
whom Williams had undoubtedly designed to murder, 
gave in evidence — that once, when sitting alone with 
her, he had said, 'Now, Miss B.., supposing that I 
should appear about midnight at your bedside, armed 
with a carving knife, what would you say ?' To which 
the confiding girl had replied, ' Oh, Mr. Williams, if it 
was anybody else, I should be frightened. But, as soon 
as I heard your voice, I should be tranquil.' Poor 
girl ! had this outline sketch of Mr. Williams been 
filled in and realized, she would have seen something 
in the corpse-like face, and heard something in the 
sinister voice, that would have unsettled her tranquillity 
for ever. But nothing short of such dreadful experiences 
could avail to unmask Mr. John Williams. 

Into this perilous region it was that, on a Saturday 
night in December, Mr. Williams, whom we suppose to 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 11 

have long since made his coup d''essai, forced his way 
through the crowded streets, bound on business. To 
say, was to do. And this night he had said to himself 
secretly, that he would execute a design which he had 
already sketched, and which, when finished, was des- 
tined on the following day to strike consternation into 
' all that mighty heart ' of London, from centre to ci.:- 
cumference. It was afterwards remembered that he 
had quitted his lodgings on this dark errand about 
eleven o'clock p. M. ; not that he meant to begin so 
soon : but he needed to reconnoitre. He carried his 
tools closely buttoned up under his loose roomy coat. 
It was in harmony with the general subtlety of his 
character, and his polished hatred of brutality, that by 
universal agreement his manners were distinguished 
for exquisite suavity : the tiger's heart was masked by 
the most insinuating and snaky refinement. All his 
acquaintances afterwards described his dissimulation as 
so ready and so perfect, that if, in making his way 
through the streets, always so crowded on a Saturday 
night in neighborhoods so poor, he had accidentally 
jostled any person, he would (as they were all satisfied) 
have stopped to offer the most gentlemanly apologies . 
with his devilish heart brooding over the most hellish 
of purposes, he would yet have paused to express a 
benign hope that the huge mallet, buttoned up under 
his elegant surtout, with a view to the little business 
that awaited him about ninety minutes further on, had 
not inflicted any pain on the stranger with whom ho 
had come into collision. Titian, I believe, but certainly 
Rubens, and perhaps Vandyke, made it a rule never to 
practise his art but in full dress — point ruffles, bag 
wig, and diamond-hilted sword ; and Mr. Williams, 



92 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 



there is reason to believe, when he went out for a 
grand compound massacre (in another sense, one might 
have applied to it the Oxford phrase of going out as 
Grand Compounder), sdways assumed black silk stock- 
ings and pumps ; nor would hie on any account have 
degraded his position as an artist by wearing a morn- 
ing gown. In his second great performance, it was 
particularly noticed and recorded by the one sole trem- 
bling man, who under killing agonies of fear was com- 
pelled (as the reader will find) from a secret stand to 
become the solitary spectator of his atrocities, that Mr. 
Williams wore a long blue fx-ock, of the very finest 
cloth, and richly lined with silk. Amongst the anec- 
dotes which circulated about him, it was also said at 
the time, that Mr. Williams employed the first of den- 
tists, and also the first of chiropodists. On no account 
would he patronize any second-rate skill. And be- 
yond a doubt, in that perilous little branch of business 
which was practised by himself, he might be regarded 
as the most aristocratic and fastidious of artists. 

But who meantime was the victim, to whose abode 
he was hurrying ? For surely he never could be so 
indiscreet as to be sailing about on a roving cruise in 
search of some chance person to murder ? Oh, no : 
he had suited himself with a victim some time before, 
viz., an old and very intimate friend. For he seems 
to have laid it down as a maxim — that the best person 
to murder was a friend ; and, in default of a friend, 
which is an article one cannot always command, an 
acquaintance : because, in either case, on first ap- 
proaching his subject, suspicion would be disarmed : 
whereas a stranger might take alarm, and find in the 
very countenance of his murderer elect a warning 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 13 

summons to place himself on guard. However, in 
the present case, his destined victim was supposed to 
unite both characters : originally he had been a friend ; 
but subsequently, on good cause arising, he had be- 
come an enemy. Or more probably, as others said, 
the feelings had long smce languished which gave life 
to either relation of friendship or of enmity. Marr 
was the name of that unhappy man, who (whether in 
the character of friend or enemy) had been selected 
for the subject of this present Saturday night's per- 
formance. And the story current at that time about 
the connection between Williams and Marr, having 
(whether true or not true) never been contradicted 
upon authority, was, that they sailed in the same India- 
man to Calcutta ; that they had quarrelled when at 
sea ; but another version of the story said — no : they 
had quarrelled after returning from sea ; and the sub- 
ject of their quarrel was Mrs. Marr, a very pretty 
young woman, for whose favor they had been rival 
candidates, and at one time with most bitter enmity 
towards each other. Some circumstances give a color 
of probability to this story. Otherwise it has some- 
times happened, on occasion of a murder not suffi- 
ciently accounted for, that, from pure goodness of 
heart intolerant of a mere sordid motive for a striking 
murder, some person has forged, and the public has 
accredited, a story representing the murderer as having 
moved under some loftier excitement : and in this 
case the public, too much shocked at the idea o^ Will- 
iams having on the single motive of gain consummated 
so complex a tragedy, welcomed the tale which repre- 
sented him as governed by deadly malice, growing out 
of the more impassioned and noble rivalry for the 



14 THREE BIEMOEABLE MURDERS. 

favor of a woman. The case remains in some degree 
doubtful ; but, certainly, the probability is, that Mrs. 
Marr had been the true cause, the causa teterrima, of 
the feud between the men. Meantime, the minutes are 
numbered, the sands of the hour-glass are running out, 
that measure the duration of this feud upon earth. 
This night it shall cease. To-morrow is the day which 
in England they call Sunday, which in Scotland they 
call by the Judaic name of ' Sabbath.' To both na- 
tions, under different names, the day has the same 
functions ; to both it is a day of rest. For thee also, 
Marr, it shall be a day of rest; so is it written ; thou, 
too, young Marr, shalt find rest — thou, and thy house- 
hold, and the stranger that is within thy gates. But 
that rest must be in the world which lies beyond the 
grave. On this side the grave ye have all slept your 
final sleep. 

The night was one of exceeding darkness ; and in 
this humble quarter of London, whatever the night 
happened to be, light or dark, quiet or stormy, all shops 
were kept open on Saturday nights until twelve o'clock, 
at the least, and many for half an hour longer. There 
was no rigorous and pedantic Jewish superstition about 
the exact limits of Sunday. At the very worst, the 
Sunday stretched over from one o'clock, a. m. of one 
day, up to eight o'clock A. M. of the next, making a 
clear circuit of thirty-one hours. This, surely, was 
long enough. Marr, on this particular Saturday night, 
would be content if it were even shorter, provided it 
would come more quickly, for he has been toiling 
through sixteen hours behind his counter. Marr's 
position in life was this : he kept a little hosier's shop, 
and had invested in his stock and the fittings of hia 



THREE MEMOKABLE MURDERS, 15 

shop about ^180. Like all men engaged in trade, he 
suffered some anxieties. He was a new beginner ; but, 
already, bad debts had alarmed him ; and bills were 
coming to maturity that were not likely to be met by 
commensurate sales." Yet, constitutionally, he was a 
sanguine hoper. At this time he was a stout, fresh- 
colored young man of twenty-seven ; in some slight 
degree uneasy from his commercial prospects, but still 
cheerful, and anticipating — (how vainly!) — that for 
this night, and the next night, at least, he will rest his 
wearied head and his cares upon the faithful bosom of 
his sweet lovely young wife. The household of Marr, 
consisting of five persons, is as follows : First, there is 
himself, who, if he should happen to be ruined, in a 
limited commercial sense, has energy enough to jump 
up again, like a pyramid of fire, and soar high above 
ruin many times repeated. Yes, poor Marr, so it might 
be, if thou wert left to thy native energies unmolested ; 
but even now there stands on the other side of the 
street one born of hell, who puts his peremptory nega- 
tive on all these flattering prospects. Second in the 
list of his household, stands his pretty and amiable 
wife, who is happy after the fashion of youthful wives, 
for she is only twenty-two, and anxious (if at all) only 
on account of her darling infant. For, thirdly, there 
is in a cradle, not quite nine feet below the street, 
viz., in a warm, cosy kitchen, and rocked at inter- 
vals by the young mother, a baby eight months old. 
Nineteen months have Marr and herself been married ; 
and this is their first-born child. Grieve not for this 
child, that it must keep the deep rest of Sunday in 
some other world ; for wherefore should an orphan, 
steeped to the lips in poverty, when once bereaved 



16 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

of father and mother, linger upon an alien and mur- 
derous earth? Fourthly, there is a stoutish boy, an 
apprentice, say thirteen years old ; a Devonshire boy, 
with handsome features, such as most Devonshire 
youths have ; * satisfied with his place ; not over- 
worked ; treated kindly, and aware that he was treated 
kindly, by his master and mistress. Fifthly, and lastly, 
bringing up the rear of this quiet household, is a ser- 
vant girl, a grown-up young woman ; and she, being 
particularly kind-hearted, occupied (as often happens 
in families of humble pretensions as to rank) a sort of 
sisterly place in her relation to her mistress. A great 
democratic change is at this very time (1854), and has 
been for twenty years, passing over British society. 
Multitudes of persons are becoming ashamed of say- 
ing, ' my master,' or * my mistress : ' the term now in 
the slow process of superseding it is, ' my employer.' 
Now, in the United States, such an expression of 
democratic hauteur, though disagreeable as a needless 
proclamation of independence which nobody is dis- 
puting, leaves, however, no lasting bad effect. For 
the domestic ' helps ' are pretty generally in a state of 
transition so sure and so rapid to the headship of 
domestic establishments belonging to themselves, that 
in effect they are but ignoring, for the present 
moment, a relation which would at any rate dissolve 
itself in a year or two. But in England, where no 

* An artist told me in this year, 1812, that having accidentally 
Been a native Devonshire regiment (either volunteers or militia), 
nine hundi'ed strong, marching past a station at ■which he had 
posted himself, he did not observe a dozen men that Tvould not 
have been described in common parlance as ' good looking.' 



THREE MEMOKAKLE MURDERS. J7 

Buch resources exist of everlasting surplus lands, the 
tendency of the change is painful. It carries with it 
a sullen and a coarse expresion of immunity from a 
yoke which was in any case a light one, and often a 
benign one. In some other place I will illustrate my 
meaning. Here, apparently, in Mrs. Marr's service, 
the principle concerned illustrated itself practically. 
Mary, the female servant, felt a sincere and unaffected 
respect for a mistress whom she saw so steadily occu- 
pied with her domestic duties, and who, though so 
young, and invested with some slight authority, never 
exerted it capriciously, or even showed it at all con- 
spiciously. According to the testimony of all the 
ncighbore, she treated her mistress with a shade of 
unobtrusive respect on the one hand, and yet was 
eager to relieve her, whenever that was possible, from 
the weight of her maternal duties, with the cheerful 
voluntary service of a sister. 

To this young woman it was, that, suddenly, within 
three or four minutes of midnight, Marr called aloud 
from the head of the stairs — directing her to go out 
and purchase some oysters for the family supper. 
Upon what slender accidents hang oftentimes solemn 
lifelong results ! Marr occupied in the concerns of his 
shop, Mrs. Marr occupied with some little ailment and 
restlessness of her baby, had both forgotten the affair 
of supper ; the time was now narrowing every mo- 
ment, as regarded any variety of choice ; and oysters 
were perhaps ordered as the likeliest article to be had 
at all, after twelve o'clock should have struck. Ana 
yet, upon this trivial circumstance depended Mary's 
life. Had she been sent abroad for supper at the 
ordinary time of ten or eleven o'clock, it is almost 
2 



18 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

certain that she, the solitary member of the household 
who escaped from the exterminating tragedy, would 
not have escaped ; too surely she would have shared 
the general fate. It had now become necessary to be 
quick. Hastily, therefore, receiving money from Marr 
with a basket in her hand, but unbonneted, Mary trip- 
ped out of the shop. It became afterwards, on recol- 
lection, a heart-chilling remembrance to herself — 
that, precisely as she emerged from the shop-door, she 
noticed, on the opposite side of the street, by the light 
of the lamps, a man's figure ; stationary at the instant, 
but in the next instant slowly moving. This was 
Williams ; as a little incident, either just before or just 
after (at present it is impossible to say which), suffi- 
ciently proved. Now, when one considers the inevita- 
ble hurry and trepidation of Mary under the circum- 
stances stated, time barely sufficing for any chance of 
executing her errand, it becomes evident that she must 
have connected some deep feeling of mysterious un- 
easiness with the movements of this unknown man ; 
else, assuredly, she would not have found her attention 
disposable for such a case. Thus far, she herself 
threw some little light upon what it might be that, semi- 
consciously, was then passing through her mind ; she 
said, that, notwithstanding the darkness, which would 
not permit her to trace the man's features, or to ascertain 
the exact direction of his eyes, it yet struck her, that 
from his carriage when in motion, and from the ap- 
parent inclination of his person, he must be looking ai 
No. 29. 

The little inciaent which I have alluded to as con- 
firming Mary's belief was, that, at some period no* 
very far from midnight, the watchman had specially 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 19 

noticed this stranger ; he had observed him continu- 
ally peeping into the window of Marr's shop ; and 
had thought this act, connected with the man's appear 
ance, so suspicious, that he stepped into Marr's shop, 
and communicated what he had seen. This fact he 
afterwards stated before the magistrates ; and he 
added, that subsequently, viz., a few minutes after 
twelve (eight or ten minutes, probably, after the de- 
parture of Mary), he (the watchman), when re-enteririg 
upon his ordinary half-hourly beat, was requested by 
Marr to assist him in closing the shutters. Here they 
had a final communication with each other ; and the 
watchman mentioned to Marr that the mysterious 
stranger had now apparently taken himself off; for 
that he had not been visible since the first communica- 
tion made to Marr by the watchman. There is little 
doubt that Williams had observed the watchman's visit 
to Marr, and had thus had his attention seasonably 
drawn to the indiscretion of his own demeanor ; so 
that the warning, given unavailingly to Marr, had been 
turned to account by Williams. There can be still 
less doubt, that the bloodhound had commenced his 
work within one minute of the watchman's assisting 
Marr to put up his shutters. And on the following 
consideration : — that which prevented Williams from 
commencing even earlier, was the exposure of the 
shop's whole interior to the gaze of street passengers. 
It was indispensable that the shutters should be accu« 
rately closed before Williams could safely get to work- 
But, as soon as ever this preliminary precaution had 
been completed, once having secured that concealment 
from the public eye it then became of still greater 
importance not to lose a moment by delay, than pre- 



20 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

viously it had been not to hazard any thing by precipi- 
tance. For all depended upon going in before Marr 
should have locked the door. On any other mode of 
effecting an entrance (as, for instance, by waiting for 
the return of Mary, and making his entrance simul- 
taneously with her), it will be seen that Williams must 
have forfeited that particular advantage which mute 
facts, when read into their true construction, will soon 
show the reader that he must have employed. Williams 
waited, of necessity, for the sound of the watchman's 
retreating steps ; waited, perhaps, for thirty seconds ; 
but when that danger was past, the next danger was, 
lest Marr should lock the door ; one turn of the key, 
and the murderer would have been locked out. In, 
therefore, he bolted, and by a dexterous movement of 
his left hand, no doubt, turned the key, without letting 
Marr perceive this fatal stratagem. It is really won- 
derful and most interesting to pursue the successive 
steps of this monster, and to notice the absolute cer- 
tainty with which the silent hieroglyphics of the case 
betray to us the whole process and movements of the 
bloody drama, not less surely and fully than if we 
had been ourselves hidden in Marr's shop, or had 
looked down from the heavens of mercy upon this 
hell-kite, that knew not what mercy meant. That he 
had concealed from Marr his trick, secret and rapid, 
upon the lock, is evident ; because else, Marr would 
instantly have taken the alarm, especially after what 
the watchmar had communicated. But it will soon 
be seen that Marr had not been alarmed. In reality, 
towards the full success of Williams, it was important 
in the last degree, to intercept and forestall any yell 
or shout of agony from Marr. Such an outcry, and 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 21 

in a situation so slenderly fenced off from the street, 
VIZ., by walls the very tlunncst, makes itself heard 
outside pretty nearly as well as if it were uttered in 
the street. Such an outcry it was indispensable to 
stifle. It was stifled ; and the reader will soon under- 
stand how. Meantime, at this point, let us leave the 
murderer alone with his victims. For fifty minutes 
let him work his pleasure. The front-door, as we 
know, is now fastened against all help. Help there 
is none. Let us, therefore, in vision, attach ourselves 
to Mary ; and, when all is over, let us come back 
with Aer, again raise the curtain, and read the dread- 
ful record of all that has passed in her absence. 

The poor girl, uneasy in her mind to an extent that 
she could but half understand, roamed up and down in 
search of an oyster shop ; and finding none that was 
still open, within any circuit that her ordinary experi- 
ence had made her acquainted with, she fancied it best 
to try the chances of some remoter district. Lights she 
saw gleaming or twinkling at a distance, that still 
tempted her onwards; and thus, amongst unknown 
streets poorly lighted,* and on a night of peculiar dark 
ness, and in a region of London where ferocious tumults 
were continually turning her out of what seemed to be 
the direct course, naturally she got bewildered. The 
purpose with which she started, had by this time become 
hopeless. Nothing remained for her pow but to retrace 

* I do not remember, chronologically, the history of gas-lights. 
&\xt in London, long after Mr. Winsor had shown the value of 
gas-lighting, and its applicability to street purposes, various dis- 
tricts were prevented, for many years, from resorting to the new 
system, in consequence of old contracts with oil-dealers, subsisting 
through long terms of years. 



22 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

her steps. But this was difficult ; for she was afraid to 
ask directions from chance passengers, whose appear- 
£:nce the darkness prevented her from reconnoitring. 
At length by his lantern she recognized a watchman ; 
through him she was guided into the right road ; and in 
ten minutes more, she found herself back at the door 
of No. 29, in Ratcliffe Highway, But by this time she 
felt satisfied that she must have been absent for fifty or 
sixty minutes ; indeed, she had heard, at a distance, 
the cry of past one o''clock, which, commencing a few 
seconds after one, lasted intermittingly for ten or thirteen 
minutes. 

In the tumult of agonizing thoughts that very soon 
surprised her, naturally it became hard for her to recall 
distinctly the whole succession of doubts, and jealousies, 
and shadowy misgivings that soon opened upon her. 
But, so far as could be collected, she had not in the 
first moment of reaching home noticed anything deci- 
sively alarming. In very many cities bells are the 
main instruments for communicating between the street 
and the interior of houses : but in London knockera 
prevail. At Marr's there was both a knocker and a 
bell. Mary rang, and at the same time very gently 
knocked. She had no fear of disturbing her master or 
mistress f them she made sure of finding still up. Her 
anxiety was for the baby, who being disturbed, might 
again rob her mistress of a night's rest. And she well 
knew that, with three people all anxiously awaiting her 
leturn, and by this time, perhaps, seriously uneasy at 
her delay, the least audible whisper from herself would 
in a moment bring one of them to the door. Yet how 
is this ? To her astonishment, but with the astonish- 
ment came creeping over her an icy horror, no stir nor 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 23 

murmur was heard ascending from the kitchen. At 
this moment came back upon her, with shuddering 
anguish, the indistinct image of the stranger in the loose 
dark coat, whom she had seen stealing along under the 
shadowy lamp-light, and too certainly watching her 
master's motions : keenly she now reproached herself 
that, under whatever stress of hurry, she had not ac« 
quainted ]\Ir. Marr with the suspicious appearances. 
Poor girl ! she did not then know that, if this commu- 
nication could have availed to put Marr upon his guard, 
it had reached him from another quarter ; so that her 
own omission, which had in reality arisen under her 
hurry to execute her master's commission, could not be 
charged with any bad consequences. But all such 
reflections this way or that were swallowed up at this 
point in over-mastering panic. That her double, sum- 
mons could have been unnoticed — this solitary fact in 
one moment made a revelation of horror. One person 
might have fallen asleep, but two — but three — that 
was a mere impossibility. And even supposing all 
three together with the baby locked in sleep, still how 
unaccountable was this utter — utter silence ! Most 
naturally at this moment something like hysterical 
liorror overshadowed the poor girl, and now at last she 
rang the bell with the violence that belongs to sickening 
terror. This done, she paused : self-command enough 
she still retained, though fast and fast it was slipping 
away from her, to bethink herself — that, if any over- 
whelming accident had compelled both Marr and his 
appreniicc-boy to leave the house in order to summon 
surgical aid from opposite quarters — a thing barely 
supposable — still, even in that case Mrs. Marr and her 
infant would be left ; and some murmuring reply, under 



24 THREE MEMORABLE MTTRDERS. 

any extremity, would be elicited from the poor mother. 
To pause, therefore, to impose stern silence upon her- 
self, so as to leave room for the possible answer to this 
final appeal, became a duty of spasmodic effori. Listen, 
therefore, poor trembling heart ; listen, and for twenty 
seconds be still as death. Still as death she was : and 
during that dreadful stillness, when she hushed her 
breath that she might listen, occurred an incident of 
killing fear, that to her dying day would never cease to 
renew its echoes in her ear. She, Mary, the poor 
trembling girl, checking and overruling herself by a 
final effort, that she might leave full opening for her 
dear young mistress's answer to her own last frantic 
appeal, heard at last and most distinctly a sound within 
the house. Yes, now beyond a doubt there is coming 
an answer to her summons. What was it ? On the 
stairs, not the stairs that led downwards to the kitchen, 
but the stairs that led upwards to the single story of 
bed-chambers above, was heard a creaking sound. Next 
was heard most distinctly a footfall : one, two, three, 
four, five stairs were slowly and distinctly descended. 
Then the dreadful footsteps were heard advancing along 
the little narrow passage to the door. The steps — oh 
heavens ! whose steps .'' — have paused at the door. 
The very breathing can be heard of that dreadful being, 
who has silenced all breathing except his own in the 
house. There is but a door between him and Mary. 
What is he doing on the other side of the door ? A 
cautious step, a stealthy step it was that came down the 
stairs, then paced along the little narrow passage — 
narrow as a coffin — till at last the step pauses at the 
door. How hard the fellow breathes ! He, the soli- 
tary murderer, is on one side the door ; Mary is on the 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 25 

Other side. Now, suppose that he should suddenly- 
open the door, and that incautiously in the dark Mary 
should rush in, and find herself in the arms of the mur- 
derer. Thus far the case is a possible one — that to a 
certainty, had this little trick been tried immediately 
upon Mary's return, it would have succeeded ; had the 
floor been opened suddenly upon her first tingle-tingle, 
neadlong she would have tumbled in, and perished. 
But now Mary is upon her guard. The unknown mur- 
derer and she have both their lips upon the door, 
listening, breathing hard ; but luckily they are on 
different sides of the door ; and upon the least indication 
of unlocking or unlatching, she would have recoiled 
into the asylum of general darkness. 

What was the murderer's meaning in coming along 
the passage to the front door ? The meaning was this : 
separately, as an individual, Mary was worth nothing 
at all to him. But, considered as a member of a house- 
hold, she had this value, viz., that she, if caught and 
murdered, perfected and rounded the desolation of the 
house. The case being reported, as reported it would 
be all over Christendom, led the imagination captive. 
The whole covey of victims was thus netted ; the house- 
hold ruin was thus full and orbicular ; and m that pro- 
portion the tendency of men and women, flutter as they 
might, would be helplessly and hopelessly to sink into 
the all-conquering hands of the mighty murderer. He 
had but to say — my testimonials are dated from No. 
29 Ratcliffe Highway, and the poor vanquished imagi- 
nation sank powerless before the fascinating rattlesnake 
eye of the murderer. There is not a doubt that the 
motive of the murderer for standing on tlie inner side 
8 



26 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

of Marr's front-door, whilst Mary stood on the outsioe, 
was — a hope that, if he quietly opentjd the door 
whisperingly counterfeiting Marr's voice, and saying 
What made you stay so long ? possibly she might have 
been inveigled. He was wrong; the time was past 
for that ; Mary was now maniacally awake ; she began 
now to ring the bell and to ply the knocker with unin- 
termitting violence. And the natural consequence was, 
that the next door neighbor, who had recently gone to 
bed and instantly fallen asleep, was roused ; and by the 
incessant violence of the ringing and the knocking, 
which now obeyed a delirious and uncontrollable im- 
pulse in Mary, he became sensible that some very 
dreadful event must be at the root of so clamorous an 
uproar. To rise, to throw up the sash, to demand 
angrily the cause of this unseasonable tumult, was the 
work of a moment. The poor girl remained sufficiently 
mistress of herself rapidly to explain the circumstance 
of her own absence for an hour ; her belief that Mr. 
and Mrs. Marr's family had all been murdered in the 
interval ; and that at this very moment the murderer 
was in the house. 

The person to whom she addressed this statement 
was a pawnbroker ; and a thoroughly brave man he 
must have been ; for it was a perilous undertaking, 
merely as a trial of physical strength, singly to face a 
mysterious assassin, who had apparently signalized his 
prowess by a triumph so comprehensive. But, again, 
for the imagination it required an effort of self-conquest 
to rush headlong into the presence of one invested with 
a cloud of mystery, whose nation, age, motives, were 
all alike unknown. Rarely on any field of battle has 



THHEE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 27 

a soldier been called upon to face so complex a 
danger. For if the entire family of his neighbor Marr 
had been exterminated, were this indeed true, such a 
scale of bloodshed would seem to argue that there 
must have been two persons as the perpetrators ; or 
if one singly had accomplished such a ruin, in that 
case how colossal must have been his audacity ! proba- 
bly, also, his skill and animal power ! Moreover, the 
unknown enemy (whether single or double) would, 
doubtless, be elaborately armed. Yet, under all these 
disadvantages, did this fearless man rush at once to the 
field of butchery in his neighbor's house. Waiting 
only to draw on his trousers, and to arm himself with 
the kitchen poker, he went down into his own little 
back-yard. On this mode of approach, he would have 
a chance of intercepting the murderer ; whereas from 
the front there would be no such chance ; and there 
would also be considerable delay in the process of 
breaking open the door. A brick wall, nine or ten 
feet high, divided his own back premises from those of 
Marr. Over this he vaulted ; and at the moment when 
he was recalling himself to the necessity of going back 
for a candle, he suddenly perceived a feeble ray of 
light already glimmering on some part of Marr's 
premises. Marr's back-door stood wide open. Proba- 
bly the murderer had passed through it one half minute 
before. Rapidly the brave man passed onwards to 
the shop, and there beheld the carnage of the night 
stretched out on the floor, and the narrow premises so 
floated with gore, that it was hardly possible to escape 
the pollution of blood in picking out a path to the 
front-door. In the lock of the door still remained the 



28 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

key which had given to the unknown murderer so 
fatal an advantage over his victims. By this time, the 
heart-shaking news involved in the outcries of Mary 
(to whom it occurred that by possibility some one ou 
of so many victims might still be within the reach of 
medical aid, but that all would depend upon speed) 
had availed, even at that late hour, to gather a small 
mob about the house. The pawnbroker threw open 
the door. One or two watchmen headed the crowd ; 
but the soul-harrowing spectacle checked them, and 
impressed sudden silence upon their voices, previously 
so loud. The tragic drama read aloud its own history 
and the succession of its several steps — few and 
summary. The murderer was as yet altogether un- 
known ; not even suspected. But there were reasons 
for thinking that he must have been a person familiarly 
known to Marr. He had entered the shop by opening 
the door after it had been closed by Marr. But it was 
justly argued — that, after the caution conveyed to 
Marr by the watchman, the appearance of any stranger 
in the shop at that hour, and in so dangerous a neigh- 
borhood, and entering by so irregular and suspicious a 
course, (i. e., walking in after the door had been 
closed, and after the closing of the shutters had cut 
off all open communication with the street), would 
naturally have roused Marr to an attitude of vigilance 
and self-defence. Any indication, therefore, that Marr 
had not been so roused, would argue to a certainty 
that something had occurred to neutralize this alarm, 
and fatally to disarm the prudent jealousies of Marr. 
But this ' something ' could only have lain in one 
simple fact, viz., that the person of the murderer was 
familiarly known to Marr as that of an ordinary and 



THEEE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 29 

unsuspected acquaintance. This being presupposed as 
the key to all the rest, the whole course and evolution 
of the subsequent drama becomes clear as daylight. 
The murderer, it is evident, had opened gently, and 
again closed behind him with equal gentleness, the 
street-door. He had then advanced to the little coun- 
ter, all the while exchanging the ordinary salutation 
of an old acquaintance with the unsuspecting Marr. 
Having reached the counter, he would then ask Marr 
for a pair of unbleached cotton socks. In a shop so 
small as JVIarr's, there could be no great latitude of 
choice for disposing of the different commodities. The 
arrangement of these had no doubt become familiar to 
the murderer ; and he had already ascertained that, in 
order to reach down the particular parcel wanted at 
present, Marr would find it requisite to face round to 
the rear, and, at the same moment, to raise his eyes 
and his hands to a level eighteen inches above his own 
head. This movement placed him in the most dis- 
advantageous possible position with regard to the mur- 
derer, who now, at the instant when Marr's hands and 
eyes were embarrassed, and the back of his head fully 
exposed, suddenly from below his large surtout, had 
unslung a heavy ship-carpenter's mallet, and, with 
one solitary blow, had so thoroughly stunned hia 
victim, as to leave him incapable of resistance. The 
whole position of Marr told its own tale. He had 
collapsed naturally behind the counter, with his hands 
so occupied as to confirm the whole outline of the 
afiair as I have herc suggested it. Probable enough 
it is that the very first blow, the first indication of 
treachery that reached Marr, would also be the last 
blow as regarded the abolition of consciousness The 



30 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

murderer's plan and rationale of murder started syste 
matically from this infliction of apoplexy, or at least 
of a stunning sufficient to insure a long loss of con- 
sciousness. This opening step placed the murderer at 
his ease. But still, as returning sense might constantly 
have led to the fullest exposures, it was his settled 
practice, by way of consummation, to cut the throat. 
To one invariable type all the murders on this occasion 
conformed : the skull was first shattered ; this step 
secured the murderer from instant retaliation ; and 
then, by way of locking up all into eternal silence, 
uniformly the throat was cut. The rest of the circum- 
stances, as self-revealed, were these. The fall of 
Marr might, probably enough, cause a dull, confused 
sound of a scuffle, and the more so, as it could not 
now be confounded with any street uproar — the shop- 
door being shut. It is more probable, however, that 
the signal for the alarm passing down to the kitchen, 
would arise when the murderer proceeded to cut 
Marr's throat. The very confined situation behind the 
counter would render it impossible, under the critical 
hurry of the case, to expose the throat broadly ; the 
horrid scene would proceed by partial and interrupted 
cuts ; deep groans would arise ; and then would come 
the rush up-stairs. Against this, as the only dangerous 
stage in the transaction, the murderer would have 
specially prepared. Mrs. Marr and the apprentice- 
boy, both young and active, would make, of course, 
for the street door ; had Mary been at home, and three 
persons at once had combined to distract the purposes 
of the murderer, it is barely possible that one of them 
would have succeeded in reaching the street. But the 
dreadful swing of the heavy mallet intercepted both 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 31 

the boy and his mistress before they could reach the 
door. Each of them lay stretched out on the centre 
of the shop floor ; and the very moment that this dis- 
abling was accomplished, the accursed hound was 
down upon their throats with his razor. The fact is, 
that, in the mere blindness of pity for poor Marr, on 
hearing his groans, Mrs. Marr had lost sight of her 
obvious policy ; she and the boy ought to have made 
for the back door; the alarm would thus have been 
given in the open air ; which, of itself, was a great 
point ; and several means of distracting the murderer's 
attention offered upon that course, which the ex- 
treme limitation of the shop denied to them upon 
the other. 

Vain would be all attempts to convey the horror 
which thrilled the gathering spectators of this piteous 
tragedy. It was known to the crowd that one person 
had, by some accident, escaped the general massacre : 
but she was now speechless, and probably delirious ; so 
that, in compassion for her pitiable situation, one female 
neighbor had carried her away, and put her to bed. 
Hence it had happened, for a longer space of time 
than could else have been possible, that no person pres- 
ent was sufficiently acquainted with the Marrs to be 
aware of the little infant ; for the bold pawnbroker had 
gone off to make a communication to the coroner ; and 
another neighbor to lodge some evidence which he 
thought urgent at a neighboring police-office. Sudden- 
ly some person appeared amongst the crowd who was 
aware that the murdered parents had a young infant ; 
this would be found ehher below-stairs, or in one of 
the bedrooms above. Immediately a stream of people 
poured down into the kitchen, where at once they saw 



32 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

the cradle — but with the bedclothes in a state of inda* 
scribable confusion. On disentangling these, pools ot 
blood became visible ; and the next ominous sign was, 
that the hood of the cradle had been smashed to pieces. 
It became evident that the wretch had found himself 
doubly embarrassed — first, by the arched hood at the 
head of the cradle, which, accordingly, he had beat into 
a ruin with his mallet, and secondly, by the gathering 
of the blankets and pillows about the baby's head. 
The free play of his blows had thus been baffled. 
And he had therefore finished the scene by applying 
his razor to the throat of the little innocent ; after 
which, with no apparent purpose, as though he had 
become confused by the spectacle of his own atroci- 
ties, he had busied himself in piling the clothes elabo- 
rately over the child's corpse. This incident undeniably 
gave the character of a vindictive proceeding to the 
whole affair, and so far confirmed the current rumor 
that the quarrel between Williams and Marr had 
originated in rivalship. One writer, indeed, alleged 
that the murderer might have found it necessary for 
his own safety to extinguish the crying of the child ; 
but it was justly replied, that a child only eight months 
old could not have cried under any sense of the trag- 
edy proceeding, but simply in its ordinary way for the 
absence of its mother ; and such a cry, even if audible 
at all out of the house, must have been precisely what 
the neighbors were hearing constantly, so that it could 
have drawn no special attention, nor suggested any 
reasonable alarm to the murderer. No one incident, 
indeed, throughout the whole tissue of atrocities, so 
much envenomed the popular fury against the uu 
known ruffian, as this useless butchery of the infant. 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 33 

Naturally, on the Sunday morning that dawned four 
or five hours later, the case was too full of horror not 
to diffuse itself in all directions ; but I have no reason 
to think that it crept into any one of the numerous 
Sunday papers. In the regular course, any ordinary 
occurrence, not occurring, or not transpiring until 
fifteen minutes after 1 a. m. on a Sunday morning, 
would first reach the public ear through the Monday 
editions of the Sunday papers, and the regular morning 
papers of the Monday. But, if such were the course 
pursued on this occasion, never can there have been 
a more signal oversight. For it is certain, that to have 
met the public demand for details on the Sunday, which 
might so easily have been done by cancelling a couple 
of dull columns, and substituting a circumstantial nar- 
rative, for which the pawnbroker and the watchman 
could have furnished the materials, would have made a 
small fortune. By proper handbills dispersed through 
all quarters of the infinite metropolis, two hundred and 
fifty thousand extra copies might have been sold ; that 
is, by any journal that should have collected exclusive 
materials, meeting the public excitement, everywhere 
stirred to the centre by flying rumors, and everywhere 
burning for ampler information. On the Sunday 
se'ennight (Sunday the octaiie from the event), took 
place the funeral of the Marrs ; in the first coffin was 
placed Marr ; in the second Mrs. Marr, ard the baby 
in her arms ; in the third the apprentice ooy. They 
were buried side by side ; and thirty thousand laboring 
people followed the funeral procession, with horror and 
grief written in their countenances. 

As yet no whisper was astir that indicated, even 
conjecturally, the hideous author of these ruins — this 



34 THREE MEiYlOTtABLE MUKDEBS. 

patron of grave-diggers. Had as much been known on 
this Sunday of the funeral concerning that person as 
became known universally six days later, the people 
would have gone right from the churchyard to the mur- 
derer's lodgings, and (brooking no delay) would have 
torn him limb from limb. As yet, however, in mere 
default of any object on whom reasonable suspicion 
could settle, the public wrath was compelled to suspend 
itself. Else, far indeed from showing any tendency to 
subside, the public emotion strengthened every day 
conspicuously, as the reverberation of the shock began 
to travel back from the provinces to the capital. On 
every great road in the kingdom, continual arrests were 
made of vagrants and ' trampers,' who could give no 
satisfactory account of themselves, or whose appear- 
ance in any respect answered to the imperfect descrip- 
tion of Williams furnished by the watchman. 

With this mighty tide of pity and indignation point- 
ing backwards to the dreadful past, there mingled also 
in the thoughts of reflecting persons an under-current 
of fearful expectation for the immediate future. ' The 
earthquake,' to quote a fragment from a striking pas- 
sage in Wordsworth — 

* The earthquake is not satisfied at once.' 

All perils, specially malignant, are recurrent. A 
murderer, who is such by passion and by a wolfish 
craving for bloodshed as a mode of unnatural luxury 
cannot relapse into inertia. Such a man, even more 
than the Alpine chamois hunter, comes to crave the 
dangers and the hairbreadth escapes of his trade, as a 
condiment for seasoning the insipid monotonies of daily 
life. But, apart from the hellish instincts that might 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 35 

too surely be relied on for renewed atrocities, it was 
clear that the murderer of the Marrs, wheresoever 
lurking, must be a needy man ; and a needy man of 
that class least likely to seek or to find resources in 
honorable modes of industry ; for which, equally by 
haughty disgust and by disuse of the appropriate habits, 
men of violence are specially disqualified. Were it, 
therefore, merely for a livelihood, the murderer whom 
all hearts were yearning to decipher, might be expected 
to make his resurrection on some stage of horror, after 
a reasonable interval. Even in the Marr murder, grant- 
ing that it had been governed chiefly by cruel and 
vindictive impulses, it was still clear that the desire 
of booty had co-operated with such feelings. Equally 
clear it was that this desire must have been disap- 
pointed : excepting the trivial sum reserved by Marr 
for the week's expenditure, the murderer found, doubt- 
less, little or nothing that he could turn to account. 
Two guineas, perhaps, would be the outside of what 
he had obtained in the way of booty. A week or so 
would see the end of that. The conviction, therefore, 
of all people was, that in a month or two, when the 
fever of excitement might a little have cooled down, 
or have been superseded by other topics of fresher 
interest, so that the newborn vigilance of household life 
would have had time to relax, some new murder, 
equally appalling, might be counted upon. 

Such was the public expectation. Let the reader 
then figure to himself the pure frenzy of horror when 
in this hush of expectation, looking, indeed, and waiting 
for the unknown arm to strike once more, but not be- 
lieving that any audacity could be equal to such an 
attempt as yet, whilst all eyes were watching, suddenly, 



36 THKEE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

on the twelfth night from the Marr murder, a second 
case of the same mysterious nature, a murder on the 
same exterminating plan was perpetrated in the very 
same neighborhood. It was on the Thursday next but 
one succeeding to the Marr murder that this second 
atrocity took place ; and many people thought at the 
time, that in its dramatic features of thrilling interest, 
this second case even went beyond the first. Tho 
family which suffered in this instance was that of a Mr. 
Williamson ; and the house was situated, if not abso- 
lutely in Ratcliffe Highway, at any rate immediately 
round the corner of some secondary street, running at 
right angles to this public thoroughfare. Mr. William- 
son was a well-known and respectable man, long settled 
in that district ; he was supposed to be rich ; and more 
with a view to the employment furnished by such a 
calling, than with much anxiety for further accumula- 
tions, he kept a sort of tavern ; which, in this respect, 
might be considered on an old patriarchal footing — 
that, although people of considerable property resorted 
to the house in the evenings, no kind of anxious sepa- 
ration was maintained between them and the other 
visiters from the class of artisans or common laborers. 
Anybody who conducted himself with propriety was 
free to take a seat, and call for any liquor that he might 
prefer. And thus the society was pretty miscellaneous ; 
in part stationary, but in some proportion fluctuating. 
The household consisted of the following five per- 
sons : — 1. Mr. Williamson, its head, who was an old 
man above seventy, and was well fitted for his situation, 
being civil, and not at all morose, but, at the same 
time, firm in maintftining order ; 2. Mrs. Williamson, 
his wife, about ten years younger than himself; 3. a 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 37 

little grand-daughter, about nine years old ; 4. a house- 
maid, who was nearly forty years old ; 5. a young 
journeyman, aged about twenty-six, belonging to some 
manufacturing establishment (of what class I have for- 
gotten) ; neither do I remember of what nation he 
was. It was the established rule at Mr. Williamson's, 
that, exactly as the clock struck eleven, all the com- 
pany, without favor or exception, moved off. That 
was one of the customs by which, in so stormy a dis- 
trict, Mr. Williamson had found it possible to keep his 
house free from brawls. On the present Thursday 
night everything had gone on as usual, except for one 
slight shadow of suspicion, which had caught the at- 
tention of more persons than one. Perhaps at a less 
agitating time it would hardly have been noticed ; but 
now, when the first question and the last in all social 
meetings turned upon the Marrs, and their unknown 
murderer, it was a circumstance naturally fitted to 
cause some uneasiness, that a stranger, of sinister ap- 
pearance, in a wide surtout, had flitted in and out of 
the room at intervals during the evening ; had some- 
times retired from the light into obscure corners ; and, 
by more than one person, had been observed stealing 
into the private passages of the house. It was pre- 
sumed in general, that the man must be known to Wil- 
liamson. And, in some slight degree, as an occasional 
customer of the house, it is not impossible that he wao. 
But afterwards, this repulsive stranger, with his ca- 
daverous ghastliness, extraordinary hair, and glazed 
eyes chewing himself intermittingly through the hours 
from 'r' to 11 p. m., revolved upon the memory of all 
who had steadily observed him with something of the 
same freezing effect as belongs to the two assassins in 



38 THREE MEMORABLE MTTRDEES. 

' Macbeth,' who present themselves reeking from the 
murder of Banquo, and gleaming dimly, with dreadful 
faces, from the misty background, athwart the pomps 
of the regal banquet. 

Meantime the clock struck eleven; the company 
broke up ; the door of entrance was nearly closed ; and 
at this moment of general dispersion the situation of 
the five inmates left upon the premises was precisely 
this : the three elders, viz., Williamson, his wife, and 
his female servant, were all occupied on the ground 
floor — Williamson himself was drawing ale, porter, 
&c., for those neighbors, in whose favor the house- 
door had been left ajar, until the hour of twelve should 
strike ; Mrs. Williamson and her servant were moving 
to and fro between the back-kitchen and a little parlor ; 
the little grand-daughter, whose sleeping-room was on 
^e first floor (which term in London means always the 
floor raised by one flight of stairs above the level of 
the street), had been fast asleep since nine o'clock ; 
lastly, the journeyman artisan had retired to rest for 
some time. He was a regular lodger in the house ; 
and his bedroom was on the second floor. For some 
time he had been undressed, and had lain down in bed. 
Being, as a working man, bound to habits of early 
rising, he was naturally anxious to fall asleep as soon 
as possible. But, on this particular night, his uneasi- 
ness, arising from the recent murders at No. 29, rose 
to a paroxysm of nervous excitement which kept him 
awake. It is possible, that from somebody he had 
heard of the suspicious-looking stranger, or might even 
personally observed him slinking about. But, were it 
otherwise, he was aware of several circumstances 
dangerously affecting this house ; for instance, the 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 39 

ruffianism of this whole neighborhood, and the dis- 
afTrecable fact that the Marrs nad lived within a few 

o 

doors of this very house, which again argued that the 
murderer also lived at no great distance. These were 
matters of general alarm. But there were others 
peculiar to this house ; in particular, the notoriety of 
AVilliamson's opulence ; the belief, whether well or ill 
founded, that he accumulated, in desks and drawers, 
the money continually flowing into his hands ; and 
lastly, the danger so ostentatiously courted by that 
habit of leaving the house-door ajar through one entire 
hour — and that hour loaded with extra danger, by the 
well-advertised assurance that no collision need be 
feared with chance convivial visiters, since all such 
people were banished at eleven. A regulation, which 
had hitherto operated beneficially for the character and 
comfort of the house, now, on the contrary, under 
altered circumstances, became a positive proclamation 
of exposure and defencelessness, through one entire 
period of an hour. Williamson himself, it was said 
generally, being a large unwieldy man, past seventy, 
and signally inactive, ought, in prudence, to make the 
locking of his door coincident with the dismissal of his 
evening party. 

Upon these and other grounds of alarm (particularly 
this, that Mrs. Williamson was reported to possess a 
considerable quantity of plate), the journeyman was 
musing painfully, and the time might be within twenty- 
eight or twenty-five minutes of twelve, when all at 
once, with a crash, proclaiming some hand of hideous 
violence, the house-door was suddenly shut and locked. 
Here, then, beyond all doubt, was the diabolic mar, 
clothed in mystery, from No. 29 Ratcliffe Highway. 



40 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

Yes, that dreadful being, who for twelve days nad 
employed all thoughts and all tongues, was now, too 
certainly, in this defenceless house, and would, in a few 
minutes, be face to face with every one of its inmates 
A question still lingered in the public mind — whethei 
at Marr's there might not have been two men at work. 
If so, there would be two at present ; and one of the 
two would be immediately disposable for the up-staira 
work ; since no danger could obviously be more imme- 
diately fatal to such an attack than any alarm given 
from an upper window to the passengers in the street. 
Through one half-minute the poor panic-stricken man 
sat up motionless in bed. But then he rose, his first 
movement being towards the door of his room. Not for 
any purpose of securing it against intrusion — too well 
ne knew that there was no fastening of any sort — 
neither lock, nor bolt ; nor was there any such move- 
able furniture in the room as might have availed to 
barricade the door, even if time could be counted on 
for such an attempt. It was no effect of prudence, 
merely the fascination of killing fear it was, that drove 
him to open the door. One step brought him to the 
head of the stairs : he lowered his head over the balus- 
trade in order to listen ; and at that moment ascended, 
from the little parlor, this agonizing cry from the 
woman-servant, ' Lord Jesus Christ ! we shall all be 
murdered ! ' What a Medusa's head must have lurked 
in those dreadful bloodless features, and those glazed 
rigid eyes, that seemed rightfully belonging to a 
corpse, when one glance at them sufficed to proclaim 
a death-warrant. 

Three separate death-struggles were by this time 
over ; and the poor petrified journeyman, quite uncpn 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 41 

scious of what he was doing, in blind, passive, self- 
surrender to panic, absolutely descended both flights of 
stairs. Infinite terror inspired him with the same im- 
pulse as might have been inspired by headlong courage. 
In his shirt, and upon old decaying stairs, that at times 
creaked under his feet, he continued to descend, until 
he had reached the lowest step but four. The situation 
was tremendous beyond any that is on record. A 
sneeze, a cough, almost a breathing, and the young 
man would be a corpse, without a chance or a struggle 
for his life. The murderer was at that time in the 
little parlor — the door of which parlor faced you in 
descending the stairs ; and this door stood ajar ; indeed, 
much more considerably open than what is understood 
by the term ' ajar.' Of that quadrant, or 90 degrees, 
which the door would describe in swinging so far open 
as to stand at right angles to the lobby, or to itself, in a 
closed position, 55 degrees at the least were exposed. 
Consequently, two out of three corpses were exposed to 
the young man's gaze. Where was the third .? And the 
murderer — where was he ? As to the murderer, he 
was walking rapidly backwards and forwards in the 
parlor, audible but not visible at first, being engaged 
with something or other in that part of the room which 
the door still concealed. What the something might 
be, the sound soon explained ; he was applying keys 
tentatively to a cupboard, a closet, and a scrutoire, in 
the hidden part of the room. Very soon, however, he 
came into view ; but, fortunately for the young man, at 
this critical moment, the murderer's purpose too entirely 
absorbed him to allow of his throwing a glance to the 
staircase, on which else the white figure of the jour- 
neyman, standing in motionless horror, would have 
4 



42 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

\)een detected in one instant, and seasoned for the grave 
in the second. As to the third corpse, the missing 
corpse, viz., Mr. Williamson's, that is in the cellar; 
and how its local position can be accounted for, re- 
mains a separate question much discussed at the time, 
but never satisfactorily cleared up. Meantime, that 
Williamson was dead, became evident to the young 
man ; since else he would have been heard stirring or 
groaning. Three friends, therefore, out of four, whom 
the young man had parted with forty minutes ago, were 
now extinguished ; remained, therefore, 40 per cent, (a 
large per centage for Williams to leave) ; remained, in 
fact, himself and his pretty young friend, the little 
grand-daughter, whose childish innocence was still 
slumbering without fear for herself, or grief for her 
aged grand-parents. If they are gone for ever, happily 
one friend (for such he will prove himself, indeed, if 
from such a danger he can save this child) is pretty 
near to her. But alas ! he is still nearer to a murderer. 
At this moment he is unnerved for any exertion what- 
ever ; he has changed into a pillar of ice ; for the 
objects before him, separated by just thirteen feet, are 
these : — The housemaid had been caught by the mur- 
derer on her knees ; she was kneeling before the fire- 
grate, which she had been polishing with black lead. 
That part of her task was finished ; and she had passed 
on to another task, viz., the filling of the grate with 
wood and coals, not for kindling at this moment, but so 
as to have it ready for kindling on the next day. The 
appearances all showed that she must have been en- 
gaged in this labor at the very moment when the 
murderer entered ; and perhaps the succession of the 
incidents arranged itself as follows : — From the awful 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 'fS 

ejaculation and loud outcry to Christ, as overheard by 
the journeyman, it was clear that then first she had 
been alarmed ; yet this was at least one and a-half or 
even two minutes after the door-slamming. Conse- 
quently the alarm which had so fearfully and season- 
ably alarmed the young man, must, in some unaccount- 
able way, have been misinterpreted by the two women. 
It was said, at the time, that Mrs. Williamson labored 
under some dulness of hearing ; and it was conjec- 
tured that the servant, having her ears filled with the 
noise of her own scrubbing, and her head half under 
the grate, might have confounded it with the street 
noises, or else might have imputed this violent closure 
to some mischievous boys. But, howsoever explained, 
the fact was evident, that, until the words of appeal to 
Christ, the servant had noticed nothing suspicious, 
nothing which interrupted her labors. If so, it followed 
that neither had Mrs. Williamson noticed anything ; for, 
in that case, she would have communicated her own 
alarm to the servant, since both were in the same small 
room. Apparently the course of things after the mur- 
derer had entered the room was this : — Mrs. Williamson 
had probably not seen him, from the accident of stand- 
ing with her back to the door. Her, therefore, before 
he was himself observed at all, he had stunned and 
prostrated by a shattering blow on the back of her 
head ; this blow, inflicted by a crow-bar, had smashed 
in the hinder part of the skull. She fell ; and by the 
noise of her fall (for all was the work of a moment) 
had first roused the attention of the servant; who then 
uttered the cry which had reached the young man ; but 
before she could repeat it, the murderer had descended 
with his uplifted instrument upon her head, crushing 



44 THREE MEDIORABLE MURDERS. 

the skull inwards upon the brain. Both the women 
were irrecoverably destroyed, so that further outrages 
were needless ; and, moreover, the murderer was con- 
scious of the imminent danger from delay ; and yet, in 
spite of his hurry, so fully did he appreciate the fatal 
consequences to himself, if any of his victims should so 
far revive into consciousness as to make circumstantial 
depositions, that, by way of making this impossible, he 
had proceeded instantly to cut the throats of each. All 
this tallied with the appearances as now presenting 
themselves. Mrs. Williamson had fallen backwards 
with her head to the door ; the servant, from her kneel- 
ing posture, had been incapable of rising, and had 
presented her head passively to blows ; after which, the 
miscreant had but to bend her head backwards so as to 
expose her throat, and the murder was finished. 

It is remarkable that the young artisan, paralyzed 
as he had been by fear, and evidently fascinated for a 
time so as to walk right towards the lion's mouth, yet 
found himself able to notice everything important. 
The reader must suppose him at this point watching 
the murderer whilst hanging over the body of Mrs. 
Williamson, and whilst renewing his search for certain 
important keys. Doubtless it was an anxious situation 
for the murderer ; for, unless he speedily found the 
keys wanted, all this hideous tragedy would end in 
nothing but a prodigious increase of the public horror, 
in tenfold precaution* therefore, and redoubled obsta- 
cles interposed between himself and his future game. 
Nay, there was even a nearer interest at stake ; his 
own immediate safety might, by a probable accident, 
be compromised. Most of those who came to the 
house for liquor were giddy girls or children, who, on 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 45 

finding this house closed, would go off carelessly to 
some other ; but, let any thoughtful woman or man 
come to the door now, a full quarter of an hour before 
ihe established time of closing, in that case suspicion 
would arise too powerful to be checked. There would 
be a sudden alarm given ; after which, mere luck 
would decide the event. For it is a remarkable fact, 
and one that illustrates the singular inconsistency of 
this villain, who, being often so superfluously subt^fe, 
was in other directions so reckless and improvident, 
that at this very moment, standing amongst corpses 
that had deluged the little parlor with blood, Williams 
must have been in considerable doubt whether he had 
any sure means of egress. There were windows, he 
knew, to the back ; but upon what ground they opened, 
he seems to have had no certain information ; and in a 
neighborhood so dangerous, the windows of the lower 
story would not improbably be nailed down ; those in 
the upper might be free, but then came the necessity 
*of a leap too formidable. From all this, however, the 
sole practical inference was to hurry forward with the 
trial of further keys, and to detect the hidden treasure. 
This it was, this intense absorption in one overmaster- 
ing pursuit, that dulled the murderer's perceptions as 
to all around him ; otherwise, he must have heard the 
breathing of the young man, which to himself at times 
became fearfully audible. As the murderer stood once 
more over the body of Mrs. Williamson, and searched 
her pockets more narrowly, he pulled out various 
clusters of keys, one of which dropping, gave a harsh 
gingling sound upon the floor. At this time it was that 
the secret witness, from his secret stand, noticed the 
fact of Williams's surtout being lined with silk of the 



46 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

finest quality. One other fact he noticed, which even- 
tually became more immediately important than many 
stronger circumstances of incrimination ; this was, that 
the shoes of the murderer, apparently new, and bought, 
probably, with poor Marr's money, creaked as he 
walked, harshly and frequently. Whh the new clusters 
of keys, the murderer walked off to the hidden section 
of the parlor. And here, at last, was suggested to the 
journeyman the sudden opening for an escape. Some 
minutes would be lost to a certainty trying all these 
keys ; and subsequently in searching the drawers, sup- 
posing that the keys answered — or in violently forcing 
them, supposing that they did not. He might thus 
count upon a brief interval of leisure, whilst the rat- 
tling of the keys might obscure to the murderer the 
creaking of the stairs under the re-ascending journey- 
man. His plan was now foi-med : on regaining his 
bedroom, he placed the bed against the door by way 
of a transient retardation to the enemy, that might give 
him a short warning, and in the worst extremity, might 
give him a chance for life by means of a desperate 
leap. This change made as quietly as possible, he 
tore the sheets, pillow-cases, and blankets into broad 
ribbons ; and after plaiting them into ropes, spliced 
the different lengths together. But at the very first he 
descries this ugly addition to his labors. Where shall 
he look for any staple, hook, bar, or other fixture, 
from which his rope, when twisted, may safely depend ? 
Measured from the window-siZZ — i. e,, the lowest part 
of the window architrave — there count but twenty-two 
or twenty-three feet to the ground. Of this length 
ten or twelve feet may be looked upon as cancelled, 
because to that extent he might drop without danger. 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 47 

So much being deducted, there would remain, say, a 
dozen feet of rope to prepare. But, unhappily, there 
is no stout iron fixture anywhere about his window. 
The nearest, indeed the sole fixture of that sort, is not 
near to the window at all ; it is a spike fixed (for no 
reason at all that is apparent) in the bed-tester ; now, 
the bed being shifted, the spike is shifted ; and its 
distance from the window, having been always four 
feet, is now seven. Seven entire feet, therefore, must 
be added to that which would have sufficed if measured 
from the window. But courage ! God, by the proverb 
of all nations in Christendom, helps those that help 
themselves. This our young man thankfully acknowl- 
edges ; he reads already, in the very fact of any 
spike at all being found where hitherto it has been 
useless, an earnest of providential aid. Were it only 
for himself that he worked, he could not feel himself 
meritoriously employed ; but this is not so ; in deep 
sincerity, he is now agitated for the poor child, whom 
he knows and loves ; every minute, he feels, brings 
ruin nearer to her; and, as he passed her door, his 
first thought had been to take her otat of bed in his 
arms, and to carry her where she might share his 
chances. But, on consideration, he felt that this sud- 
den awaking of her, and the impossibility of even 
whispering any explanation, would cause her to cry 
audibly ; and the inevitable indiscretion of one would 
be fatal to the two. As the Alpine avalanches, when 
suspended above the traveller's head, oftentimes (we 
are told) come down through the stirring of the air by 
a simple whisper, precisely on such a tenure of a 
whisper was now suspended the murderous malice of 
the man below. No ; there is but one way to sava 



48 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

\he child ; towards her deliverance, the first step is 
through his own. And he has made an excellent 
beginning ; for the spike, which too fearfully he had 
expected to see torn away by any strain upon the 
half-carious wood, stands firmly when tried againsf the 
pressure of his own weight. He has rapidly fastened 
on to it three lengths of his new rope, measuring 
eleven feet. lie plaits it roughly ; so that only three 
feet have been lost in the intertwisting ; he has spliced 
on a second length equal to the first ; so that, already, 
sixteen feet are ready to throw out of the window ; 
and thus, let the worst come to the worst, it will not be 
absolute ruin to swarm down the rope so far as it will 
reach, and then to drop boldly. All this has been 
accomplished in about six minutes ; and the hot con- 
test between above and below is steadily but fervently 
proceeding. Murderer is working hard in the parlor ; 
journeyman is working hard in the bedroom. Mis- 
creant is getting on famously down-stairs ; one batch 
of bank-notes he has already bagged ; and is hard 
upon the scent of a second. He has also sprung a 
covey of golden coins. Sovereigns as yet were not ; 
but guineas at this period fetched thirty shillings 
a-piece ; and he has worked his way into a little quarry 
of these. Murderer is almost joyous ; and if any 
creature is still living in this house, as shrewdly he 
suspects, and very soon means to know, with that 
creature he would be happy, before cutting the crea- 
ture's throat, to drink a glass of something. Instead 
of the glass, might he not make a present to the poor 
creature of its throat ? Oh no ! impossible ! Throats 
are a sort of thing that he never makes presents of; 
business — ■ business must be attended to. Really the 



THBEE MEMORABLE MTJRDERS. 49 

Iwo men, considered simply as men of business, are 
botli meritorious. Like chorus and semi-chorus, strophe 
and antistrophc, they work each against the other. 
Pull journeyman, pull murderer ! Pull baker, pull 
devil ! As regards the journeyman, he is now safe. 
To his sixteen feet, of which seven are neutralized by 
the distance of the bed, he has at last added six feet 
more, which will be short of reaching the ground by 
perhaps ten feet — a trifle which man or boy may drop 
without injuiy. All is safe, therefore, for him : which 
is more than one can be sure of for miscreant in the 
parlor. Miscreant, however, takes it coolly enough : 
the reason being, that, with all his cleverness, for once 
in his life miscreant has been over-reached. The 
reader and 1 know, but miscreant does not in the least 
suspect, a little fact of some importance, viz., that 
just now through a space of full three minutes he haj 
been overlooked and studied by one, who (though 
reading in a dreadful book, and suffering under mortal 
panic) took accurate notes of so much as his limited 
opportunities allowed him to see, and will assuredly 
report the creaking shoes and the silk-mounted surtout 
in quarters where such little facts will tell very little to 
his advantage. But, arlthough it is true that Mr. Wii» 
liams, unaware of the journeyman's having 'assisted' 
at the examination of Mrs. Williamson's pockets, could 
not connect any anxiety with that person's subsequent 
proceedings, nor specially, therefore, with his havmg 
embarked in the rope-weaving line, assuredly he knew 
of reasons enough for not loitering. And yet he did 
loiter. Reading his acts by the light of such mute 
traces as he left behind him, the police became aware 
that latterly he must have loitered. And the reasoo 
6 



50 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

which governed him is striking ; because at once K 
records — that murder was not pursued by him simply 
as a means to an end, but also as an end for itself. 
Mr. Williams had now been upon the premises for 
perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes ; and in that space 
of time he had dispatched, in a style satisfactory to 
himself, a considerable amount of business. He had 
done, in commercial language, ' a good stroke of busi- 
ness.' Upon two floors, viz., the cellar-floor and the 
ground-floor, he has 'accounted for' all the population. 
But there remained at least two floors more ; and it 
now occurred to Mr. Williams that, although the land- 
lord's somewhat chilling manner had shut him out from 
any familiar knowledge of the household arrange- 
ments, too probably on one or other of those floors 
there must be some throats. As to plunder, he has 
already bagged the whole. And it was next to impos- 
sible that any arrear the most trivial should still remain 
for a gleaner. But the throats — the throats — there 
it was that arrears and gleanings might perhaps be 
counted on. And thus it appeared that, in his wolfish 
thirst for blood, Mr. Williams put to hazard the whole 
fruits of his night's work, and his life into the bargain. 
At this moment, if the murderer knew all, could he 
see the open window above stairs ready for the descent 
of the journeyman, could he witness the life-and-death 
rapidity with which that journeyman is working, could 
he guess at the almighty uproar which within ninety 
seconds will be maddening the population of this pop- 
ulous district — no picture of a maniac m flight of 
panic or in pursuit of vengeance would adequately 
represent the agony of haste with which he would 
himself be hurrying to the street-door for final evasion. 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 51 

That mode of escape was still free. Even at this 
moment, there yet remained time sufficient for a suc- 
cessful flight, and, therefore, for the following revolu- 
tion in the romance of his own abominable life. He 
had in his pockets above a hundred pounds of booty ; 
means, therefore, for a full disguise. This very night, 
if he will shave off his yellow hair, and blacken his 
eyebrows, buying, when morning light returns, a dark- 
colored wig, and clothes such as may co-operate in 
personating the character of a grave professional man, 
he may elude all suspicions of impertinent policemen ; 
may sail by any one of a hundred vessels bound for 
any port along the huge line of sea-board (stretching 
through twenty-four hundred miles) of the American 
United States ; may enjoy fifty years for leisurely 
repentance ; and may even die in the odor of sanctity. 
On the other hand, if he prefer active life, it is not 
impossible that, with his subtlety, hardihood, and 
unscrupulousness, in a land where the simple process 
of naturalization converts the alien at once into a child 
of the family, he might rise to the president's chair ; 
misht have a statue at his death : and afterwards a life 
in three volumes quarto, with no hint glancing towards 
No. 29 RatclifFe Highway. But all depends on the 
next ninety seconds. Within that time there is a sharp 
turn to be taken ; there is a wrong turn, and a right 
turn. Should his better angel guide him to the right 
one, all may yet go well as regards this world's pros- 
perity. But behold ! in two minutes from this point 
we shall see him take the wrong one : and then Neme- 
sis will be at his heels with ruin perfect and sudden. 

Meantime, if the murderer allows himself to loiter, 
the ropemaker overhead does not. Well he knows 



52 THKEE MEMORABLE MTTRDERS. 

that tne poor child's fate is on the edge of a razor : for 
all turns upon the alarm being raised before the mur- 
derer reaches her bedside. And at this very moment, 
whilst desperate agitation is nearly paralyzing his 
fingers, he hears the sullen stealthy step of the mur- 
derer creeping up through the darkness. It had been 
the expectation of the journeyman (founded on the 
clamorous uproar with which the street-door was slam- 
med) that Williams, when disposable for his up-stairs 
work, would come racing at a long jubilant gallop, and 
with a tiger roar ; and perhaps, on his natural instincts, 
he would have done so. But this mode of approach, 
which was of dreadful effect when applied to a case 
of surprise, became dangerous in the case of people 
who might by this time have been placed fully upon 
their guard. The step which he had heard was on the 
staircase — but upon which stair ? He fancied upon 
the lowest : and in a movement so slow and cautious, 
even this might make all the difference ; yet might it 
not have been the tenth, twelfth, or fourteenth stair ? 
Never, perhaps, in this world did any man feel his own 
responsibility so cruelly loaded and strained, as at this 
moment did the poor journeyman on behalf of the 
slumbering child. Lose but two seconds, through 
awkwardness or through the self-counteractions of 
panic, and for her the total difference arose between 
life and death. Still there is a hope : and nothing can 
so frightfully expound the hellish nature of him whose 
baleful shadow, to speak astrologically, at this moment 
darkens the house of life, than the simple expression 
of the ground on which this hope rested. The journey- 
man felt sure that the murderer would not be satisfied 
to kill the poor child whilst unconscious. This would 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 53 

be to defeat his whole purpose in murdering ner at all. 
To an epicure in murder such as Williams, it would be 
taking away the very sting of the enjoyment, if the 
poor child should be suffered to drink off the bitter cup 
of death without fully apprehending the misery of the 
situation. But this luckily would require time : .he 
doub.3 confusion of mind, first, from being roused up 
at so unusual an hour, and, secondly, from the horror 
of the occasion when explained to her, would at first 
produce fainting, or some mode of insensibility or dis- 
traction, such as must occupy a considerable time. 
The logic of the case, in short, all rested upon the ultra 
fiendishness of Williams. Were he likely to be con- 
tent with the mere fact of the child's death, apart from 
the process and leisurely expansion of its mental 
agony — in that case there would be no hope. But, 
because our present murderer is fastidiously finical in 
his exactions — a sort of martinet in the scenical group- 
ing and draping of the circumstances in his murders — 
therefore it is that hope becomes reasonable, since all 
such refinements of preparation demand time. Mur- 
ders of mere necessity Williams was obliged to hurry ; 
but, in a murder of pure voluptuousness, entirely dis- 
interested, where no hostile witness was to be removed, 
no extra booty to be gained, and no revenge to be grat- 
ified, it is clear that to hurry would be altogether to 
ruin. If this child, therefore, is to be saved, it will be 
on pure SESthetical considerations.* 

* Let the reader, who is disposed to regard as exaggerated or 
romantic the pure fiendishness imputed to Williams, recollect that, 
except for the luxurious purpose of basking and revelling in the 
anguish of dying despair, he had no motive at all, small or great, 
for attempting the murder of this young girl. She had seea 



54 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

But all considerations whatever are at this moment 
suddenly cut short. A second step is heard on the 
stairs, but still stealthy and cautious ; a third — and 
then the child's doom seems fixed. But just at that 
moment all is ready. The window is wide open ; the 
rope is swinging free ; the journeyman has launched 
himself; and already he is in the first stage of his de- 
scent. Simply by the weight of his person he descended, 
and by the resistance of his hands he retarded the de- 
scent. The danger was, that the rope should run too 
smoothly through his hands, and that by too rapid an 
acceleration of pace he should come violently to the 
ground. Happily he was able to resist the descending 
impetus : the knots of the splicings furnished a succes- 
sion of retardations. But the rope proved shorter by 
four or five feet than he had calculated : ten or eleven 
teet from the ground he hung suspended in the air; 
speechless for the present, through long-continued 
agitation ; and not daring to drop boldly on the rough 
carriage pavement, lest he should fracture his legs. 
But the night was not dark, as it had been on occasion 
of the Marr murders. And yet, for purposes of criminal 
police, it was by accident worse than the darkest night 
that ever hid a murder or baffled a pursuit. London, 
from east to west, was covered with a deep pall (rising 
from the river) of universal fog. Hence it happened, 
that for twenty or thirty seconds the young man hang- 
ing in the air was not observed. His white shirt at 

nothing, heard nothing — was fast asleep, and her door was 
closed ; so that, as a witness against him, he knew that she was 
as. useless as any one of the three corpses. And yet he was 
making preparations for her murder, when the alarm in the 
street iaterrupted him. 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 55 

length attracted notice. Three or four people ran up, 
and received him in their arms, all anticipating some 
dreadful annunciation. To what house did he belong ? 
Even that was not instantly apparent ; but he pointed 
with his finger to Williamson's door, and said in a 
half-choking whisper — ' Marr''s murderer., now at 
work ! ' 

All explained itself in a moment : the silent language 
of the fact made its own eloquent revelation. The 
mysterious exterminator of No. 29 RatclifTe Highway 
had visited another house ; and, behold ! one man only 
had escaped through the air, and in his night-dress, to 
tell the tale. Superstitiously, there was something to 
check the pursuit of this unintelligible criminal. Mor- 
ally, and in the interests of vindictive justice, there 
was everything to rouse, quicken, and sustain it. 

Yes, Marr's murderer — the man of mystery — was 
again at work ; at this moment perhaps extinguishing 
some lamp of life, and not at any remote place, but 
here — in the very house which the listeners to this 
dreadful announcement were actually touching. The 
chaos and blind uproar of the scene which followed, 
measured by the crowded reports in the journals of 
many subsequent days, and in one feature of that case, 
has never to my knowledge had its parallel ; or, if a 
parallel, only in one case — what followed, I mean, on 
the acquittal of the seven bishops at Westminster in 
1688. At present there was more than passionate 
enthusiasm. The frenzied movement of mixed horror 
and exultation — the ululation of vengeance which 
ascended instantaneously from the individual street, and 
then by a sublime sort of magnetic contagion from all 



56 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

the adjacent streets, can be adequately expressed only 
by a rapturous passage in Shelley : — 

• The transport of a fierce and monstrous gladness 

Spread through the multitudinous streets, fast flying 
Upon the wings of fear : — From his dull madness 

The starveling waked, and died in joy : the dying, 
Among the corpses in stark agony lying. 

Just heard the happy tidings, and in hope 
Closed their faint eyes : from house to house replying 

With loud acclaim the living shook heaven's cope. 
And fill'd the startled earth with echoes.'* 

There was something, indeed, half inexplicable in the 
instantaneous interpretation of the gathering shout ac- 
cording to its true meaning. In fact, the deadly roar 
of vengeance, and its sublime unity, could point in this 
district only to the one demon whose idea had brooded 
and tyrannized, for twelve days, over the general 
heart: every door, every window in the neighborhood, 
flew open as if at a word of command ; multitudes, 
without waiting for the regular means of egress, leaped 
down at once from the windows on the lower story ; 
sick men rose from their beds ; in one instance, as if 
expressly to verify the image of Shelley (in v. 4, 5, 6, 7), 
a man whose death had been looked for through some 
days, and who actually did die on the following day, 
rose, armed himself with a sword, and descended in 
his shirt into the street. The chance was a good one, 
and the mob were made aware of it, for catching the 
wolfish dog in the high noon and carnival of his bloody 
revels — in the very centre of his own shambles. For 

* ' Revolt of Islam,' canto xii. 



THHEB MEMORABLE MURDERS. 57 

a moment the mob was self-baffled by its own numbers 
and iis own fury. But even that fury felt the call for 
self-control. It was evident that the massy street-door 
must be driven in, since there was no longer any living 
person to co-operate with their efforts from within, ex- 
cepting only a female child. Crowbars dexterously 
applied in one minute tnrew the door out of hangings, 
and the people entered like a torrent. It may be 
guessed with what fret and irritation to their consuming 
fury, a signal of pause and absolute silence was made 
by a person of local importance. In the hope of /e- 
ceivinir some useful communication, the mob became 
silent. ' Now listen,' said the man of authority, ' and 
we shall learn whether he is above-stairs or below.' 
Immediately a noise was heard as if of some one 
forcing windows, and clearly the sound came from a 
bedroom above. Yes, the fact was apparent that the 
murderer was even yet in the house : he had been 
caught in a trap. Not having made hiinself familiar 
with the details of Williamson's house, to all appear- 
ance he had suddenly become a prisoner in one of the 
upper rooms. Towards this the crowd now rushed 
impetuously. The door, however, was found to be 
slightly fastened ; and, at the moment when this was 
forced, a loud crash of the window, both glass and 
frame, announced that the wretch had made his escape. 
He had leaped down ; and several persons in the 
crowd, who burned with the general fury, leaped after 
him. These persons had not troubled themselves about 
the nature of the ground ; but now, on making an ex- 
amination of it with torches, they reported it to be an 
inclined plane, or embankment of clay, very wet and 
adhesive. The prints of the man's footsteps wero 



58 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

deeply impressed upon the clay, and therefore easily 
traced up to the summit of the embankment ; but it was 
perceived at once that pursuit would be useless, from 
the density of the mist. Two feet ahead of you, a man 
U^as entirely withdrawn from your power of identifica- 
tion ; and, on overtaking him, you could not venture 
to challenge him as the same whom you had lost sight 
of. Never, through the course of a whole century, 
could there be a night expected more propitious to an 
escaping criminal : means of disguise Williams now 
had in excess ; and the dens were innumerable in the 
neighborhood of the river that could have sheltered him 
for years from troublesome inquiries. But favors are 
thrown away upon the reckless and the thankless. 
That night, when the turning-point offered itself for his 
whole future career, Williams took the wrong turn ; 
for, out of mere indolence, he took the turn to his old 
lodgings — that place which, in all England, he had 
Just now the most reason to shun. 

Meantime the crowd had thoroughly searched the 
premises of Williamson. The first inquiry was for the 
young grand-daughter. Williams, it was evident, had 
gone into her room : but in this room apparently it was 
that the sudden uproar in the streets had surprised him ; 
after which his undivided attention had been directed 
to the windows, since through these only any retreat 
had been left open to him. Even this retreat he owed 
only to the fog and to the hurry of the moment, and to 
the difficulty of approaching the premises by the rear. 
The little girl was naturally agitated by the influx of 
strangers at that hour ; but otherwise, through the hu- 
mane precautions of the neighbors, she was preserved 
from all knowledge of the dreadful events that had oc» 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 59 

curred whilst she herself was sleeping. Her poor old 
grandfather was still missing, until the crowd descended 
into the cellar ; he was then found lying prostrate on 
tlie cellar floor : apparently he had been thrown down 
from the top of the cellar stairs, and with so much vio- 
lence, that one leg was broken. After he had been 
thus disabled, Williams had gone down to him, and cut 
his throat. There was much discussion at the time, in 
some of the public journals, upon the possibility of re- 
conciling these incidents with other circumstantialities 
of the case, supposing that only one man had been con- 
cerned in the affair. That there was only one man 
concerned, seems to be certain. One only was seen 
or heard at Marr's : one only, and beyond all doubt the 
same man, was seen by the young journeyman in Mrs. 
Williamson's parlor; and one only was traced by his 
footmarks on the clay embankment. Apparently the 
course which he had pursued was this : he had intro- 
duced himself to Williamson by ordering some beer. 
This order would oblige the old man to go down into 
the cellar ; Williams would wait until he had reached 
it, and would then ' slam ' and lock the street-door in 
the violent way described. Williamson would come up 
in agitation upon hearing this violence. The murderer, 
aware that he would do so, met him, no doubt, at the 
head of the cellar stairs, and threw him down ; after 
which he would go down to consummate the murder in 
his ordinary way. All this would occupy a minute, or 
a minute and a half; and in that way the interval would 
be accounted for that elapsed between the alarming 
sound of the street-door as heard by the journeyman, 
and the lamentable outcry of the female servant. It is 
evident also, that the reason why no cry whatsoever 



60 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

had been heard from the lips of Mrs. Williamson, is 
due to the positions of the parties as I have sketched 
them. Coming behind Mrs. Williamson, unseen there- 
fore, and from her deafness unheard, the murderer 
would inflict entire abolition of consciousness while she 
was yet unaware of his presence. But with the servant, 
who had unavoidably witnessed the attack upon her 
mistress, the murderer could not obtain the same ful- 
ness of advantage ; and she therefore had time for 
making an agonizing ejaculation. 

It has been mentioned, that the murderer of the Marrs 
was not for nearly a fortnight so much as suspected; 
meaning that, previously to the Williamson murder, no 
vestige of any ground for suspicion in any direction 
whatever had occurred either to the general public or to 
the police. But there were two very limited exceptions 
to this state of absolute ignorance. Some of the magis- 
trates had in their possession something which, when 
closely examined, offered a very probable means for 
tracing the criminal. But as yet they had not traced 
him. Until the Friday morning next after the destruc- 
tion of the Williamsons, they had not published the im- 
portant fact, that upon the ship-carpenter's mallet (with 
which, as regarded the stunning or disabling process, 
the murders had been achieved) were inscribed the let- 
ters ' J. P.' This mallet had, by a strange oversight 
on the part of the murderer, been left behind in Marr's 
shop ; and it is an interesting fact, therefore, that, had 
the villain been intercepted by the brave pawnbroker, 
he would have been met virtually disarmed. This pub- 
lic notification was made officially on the Friday, viz., 
on the thirteenth day after the first murder. And it 
was instantly followed (as will be seen) by a most im 



THREE MEMORABLE MITRDEES. 61 

portant result. Meantime, within the secrecy of one 
single bedroom in all London, it is a fact that Williams 
had been whisperingly the object of veiy deep suspicion 
from the very first — that is, within that same hour 
which witnessed the Marr tragedy. And singular it is, 
that the suspicion was due entirely to his own folly. 
Williams lodged, in company with other men of various 
nations, at a public-house. In a large dormitory there 
were arranged five or six beds ; these were occupied 
by artisans, generally of respectable character. One 
or two Englishmen there were, one or two Scotchmen, 
three or four Germans, and Williams, whose birth-place 
was not certainly known. On the fatal Saturday night, 
about half-past one o'clock, when Williams returned 
from his dreadful labors, he found the English and 
Scotch party asleep, but the Germans awake : one of 
them was sitting up with a lighted candle in his hands, 
and reading aloud to the other two. Upon this, Wil- 
liams said, in an angry and very peremptory tone, ' Oh, 
put that candle out ; put it out directly ; we shall all be 
burned in our beds.' Had the British party in the room 
been awake, Mr. Williams would have roused a muti- 
nous protest against this arrogant mandate. But Ger- 
mans are generally mild and facile in their tempers ; 
so the light was complaisantly extinguished. Yet, as 
there were no curtains, it struck the Germans that the 
danger was really none at all ; for bed-clothes, massed 
upon each other, will no more burn than the leaves of 
a closed book. Privately, therefore, the Germans drew 
an inference, that Mr. Williams must have had some 
urgent motive for withdrawing his own person and dress 
from observation. What this motive might be, the next 
day's news diffused all over London, and of course at 



62 THREE MEMORABLE MTTRDERS. 

this house, not two furlongs from Marr's shop, made 
awfully evident ; and, as may well be supposed, the 
suspicion was communicated to the other members of 
the dormitory. All of them, however, were aware of 
the legal danger attaching, under English law, to insin- 
uations against a man, even if true, which might not 
admit of proof. In reality, had Williams used the most 
obvious precautions, had he simply walked down to the 
Thames (not a stone's-throw distant), and flung two of 
his implements into the river, no conclusive proof could 
have been adduced against him. And he might have 
realized the scheme of Courvoisier (the murderer of 
Lord William Russell) — viz., have sought each sepa- 
rate month's support in a separate well-concerted mur- 
der. The party in the dormitory, meantime, were 
satisfied themselves, but waited for evidences that 
might satisfy others. No sooner, therefore, had the 
official notice been published as to the initials J. P. on 
the mallet, than every man in the house recognized at 
once the well-known initials of an honest Norwegian 
ship-carpenter, John Petersen, who had worked in the 
English dockyards until the present year ; but, having 
occasion to revisit his native land, had left his box of 
tools in the garrets of this inn. These garrets were 
now searched. Petersen's tool-chest was found, but 
wanting the mallet ; and, on further examination, 
another overwhelming discovery was made. The sur- 
geon, who examined the corpses at Williamson's had 
given it as his opinion that the throats were not cut by 
means of a razor, but of some implement differently 
shaped. It was now remembered that Williams had 
recently borrowed a large French knife of peculiar 
construction ; and accordingly, from a heap of old lura« 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 63 

bcr and rags, there was soon extricated a waistcoat, 
whicli the whole house could swear to as recently worn 
by Williams. In this waistcoat, and glued by gore to 
the lining of its pockets, was found the French knife. 
Next, it was matter of notoriety to everybody in the 
inn, that Williams ordinarily wore at present a pair of 
creaking shoes, and a brown surtout lined with silk. 
Many other presumptions seemed scarcely called for. 
Williams was immediately apprehended, and briefly 
examined. This was on the Friday. On the Saturday 
morning (viz., fourteen days from the Marr murders) 
he was again brought up. The circumstantial evidence 
was overwhelming ; Williams watched its course, but 
said very little. At the close, he was fully committed 
for trial at the next sessions ; and it is needless to say, 
that, on his road to prison, he was pursued by mobs so 
fierce, that, under ordinary circumstances, there would 
have been small hope of escaping summary vengeance. 
But upon this occasion a powerful escort had been pro- 
vided ; so that he was safely lodged in jail. In this 
particular jail at this time, the regulation was, that at 
five o'clock, p. M. all the prisoners on the criminal side 
should be finally locked up for the night, and with- 
out candles. For fourteen hours (that is, until seven 
o'clock on the next morning) they were left unvisited, 
and in total darkness. Time, therefore, Williams had 
for committing suicide. The means in other respects 
were small. One iron bar there was, meant (if I re- 
member) for the suspension of a lamp ; upon this he 
had hanged himself by his braces. At what hour was 
uncertain : some people fancied at midnight. And in 
that case, precisely at the hour when, fourteen days 
before, he had been spreading horror and desolation 



64 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

through the quiet family of poor Marr, now was he 
forced into drinking of the same cup, presented to his 
lips by the same accursed hands. 

The case of the M'Keans, which has been specially 
alluded to, merits also a slight rehearsal for the dread- 
ful picturesqueness of some two or three amongst its 
circumstances. The scene of this murder was at a 
rustic inn, some few miles (I think) from Manchester ; 
and the advantageous situation of this inn it was, out 
of which arose the two fold temptations of the case. 
Generally speaking, an inn argues, of course, a close 
cincture of neighbors — as the original motive for 
opening such an establishment. But, in this case, the 
house individually was solitary, so that no interruption 
was to be looked for from any persons living within 
reach of screams ; and yet, on the other hand, the cir- 
cumjacent vicinity was eminently populous ; as one 
consequence of which, a benefit club had established 
its weekly rendezvous in this inn, and left the peculiar 
accumulations in their club-room, under the custody of 
the landlord. This fund arose often to a considerable 
amount, fifty or seventy pounds, before it was trans- 
ferred to the hands of a banker. Here, therefore, was 
a treasure worth some little risk, and a situation that 
promised next to none. These attractive circumstances 
had, by accident, become accurately known to one or 
both of the two M'Keans ; and, unfortunately, at a 
moment of overwhelming misfortune to themselves. 
They were hawkers ; and, until lately, had borne most 
respectable characters : but some mercantile crash had 
overtaken them with utter ruin, in which their joint 
capital had been swallowed up to the last shilling. 



THEEE MEMOEABLE MURDERS. 65 

This sudden prostration had made them desperate : 
their own Httle property had been swallowed up in a 
large social catastrophe, and society at large they 
looked upon as accountable to them for a robbery. 
In preying, therefore, upon society, they considered 
themselves as pursuing a wild natural justice of retali- 
ation. The money aimed at did certainly assume the 
character of public money, being the product of many 
separate sabscriptions. They forgot, however, that in 
the murderous acts, which too certainly they meditated 
as preliminaries to the robbery, they could plead no such 
imaginary social precedent. In dealing with a family 
that seemed almost helpless, if all went smoothly, they 
relied entirely upon their own bodily strength. They 
were stout young men, twenty-eight to thirty-two years 
old ; somewhat undersized as to height ; but squarely 
built, deep-chested, broad-shouldered, and so beau- 
tifully formed, as regarded the symmetry of their limbs 
and their articulations, that, after their execution, the 
bodies were privately exhibited by the surgeons of the 
Manchester Infirmary, as objects of statuesque interest. 
On the other hand, the household which they proposed 
to attack consisted of the following four persons : — 1. 
the landlord, a stoutish farmer — but him they intended 
to disable by a trick then newly introduced amongst 
robbers, and termed hocussing, i. e., clandestinely drug- 
ging the liquor of the victim with laudanum ; '2. the 
landlord's wife ; 3. a young servant woman ; 4. a boy, 
twelve or fourteen years old. The danger was, that 
out of four persons, scattered by possibility over a 
house which had two separate exits, one at least might 
escape, and by better acquaintance with the adjacent 
paths, might succeed in giving an alarm to some of the 
6 



66 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

houses a furlong distant. Their final resolution was, to be 
guided by circumstances as to the mode of conducting 
the affair; and yet, as it seemed essential to success 
that they should assume the air of strangers to each 
other, it was necessary that they should preconcert 
some general outline of their plan ; since it would on 
this scheme be impossible, without awaking violent sus- 
picions, to make any communications under the eyes 
of the family. This outline included, at the least, one 
murder : so much was settled ; but, otherwise, their 
subsequent proceedings make it evident that they wished 
to have as little bloodshed as was consistent with their 
final object. On the appointed day, they presented 
themselves separately at the rustic inn, and at different 
hours. One came as early as four o'clock in the after- 
noon ; the other not until half-past seven. They saluted 
each other distantly and shyly ; and, though occasion- 
ally exchanging a few words in the character of 
strangers, did not seem disposed to any familiar inter- 
course. With the landlord, however, on his return 
about eight o'clock from Manchester, one of the brothers 
entered into a lively conversation ; invited him to take 
a tumbler of punch ; and, at a moment when the land- 
lord's absence from the room allowed it, poured into 
the punch a spoonful of laudanum. Some time after 
this, the clock struck ten ; upon which the elder M'Kean, 
professing to be weary, asked to be shown up to his 
bedroom : for each brother, immediately on arriving, 
had engaged a bed. On this, the poor servant girl had 
presented herself with a bed-candle to light him up- 
stairs. At this critical moment the family were dis- 
tributed thus : — the landlord, stupefied with the horrid 
narcotic which he had drunk, had retired to a private 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 67 

room adjoining the public room, for the purpose of re- 
cHning upon a sofa : and he, luckily for his own safety, 
was looked upon as entirely incapacitated for action. 
The landlady was occupied with her husband. And 
thus the younger M'Kean was left alone in the public 
room. He rose, therefore, softly, and placed himself 
at the foot of the stairs which his brother had just 
ascended, so as to be sure of intercepting any fugitive 
from the bed-room above. Into that room the elder 
M'Kcan was ushered by the servant, who pointed to two 
beds — one of which was already half occupied by the 
boy, and the other empty : in these, she intimated that 
the two strangers must dispose of themselves for the 
night, according to any arrangement that they might 
agree upon. Saying this, she presented him with the 
candle, which he in a moment placed upon the table ; 
and, intercepting her retreat from the room threw his 
arm round her neck with a gesture as though he meant 
to kiss her. This was evidently what she herself an- 
ticipated, and endeavored to prevent. Her horror may 
be imagined, when she felt the perfidious hand that 
clasped her neck armed with a razor, and violently cut- 
ting her throat. She was hardly able to utter one 
scream, before she sank powerless upon the floor. This 
dreadful spectacle was witnessed by the boy, who was 
not asleep, but had presence of mind enough instantly 
to close his eyes. The murderer advanced hastily to 
the bed, and anxiously examined the expression of the 
boy's features : satisfied he was not, and he then placed 
his hand upon the boy's heart, in order to judge by its 
beatings whether he were agitated or not. This was a 
dreadful trial : and no doubt the counterfeit sleep would 
immediately have been detected, when suddenly a 



68 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

dreadful spectacle drew off the attention of the murderer. 
Solemnly, and in ghostly silence, uprose in her dying 
delirium the murdered girl ; she stood upright, she 
walked steadily for a moment or two, she bent her steps 
towards the door. The murderer turned away to pur- 
sue her ; and at that moment the boy, feeling that his 
one solitary chance was to fly while this scene was in 
progress, bounded out of bed. On the landing at the 
head of the stairs was one murderer, at the fpot of the 
stairs was the other : who could believe that the boy had 
the shadow of a chance for escaping ? And yet, in the 
most natural way, he surmounted all hindrances. In 
the boy's horror, he laid his left hand on the balustrade, 
and took a flying leap over it, which landed him at the 
bottom of the stairs, without having touched a single 
stair. He had thus eflfectually passed one of the mur- 
derers : the other, it is true, was still to be passed ; 
and this would have been impossible but for a sudden 
accident. The landlady had been alarmed by the faint 
scream of the young woman ; had hurried from her pri- 
vate room to the girl's assistance ; but at the foot of 
the stairs had been intercepted by the younger brother, 
and was at this moment struggling with him. The 
confusion of this life-and-death conflict had allowed the 
boy to whirl past them. Luckily he took a turn into a 
kitchen, out of which was a back-door, fastened by a 
single bolt, that ran freely at a touch ; and through this 
door he rushed into the open fields. But at this moment 
the elder brother was set free for pursuit by the death 
of the poor girl. There is no doubt, that in her deli- 
riun. the 'mage moving through her thoughts was that 
of the club, which met once a-week. She fancied it 
no doubt sitting ; and to this room, for help and for 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 69 

safety she staggered along ; she entered it, and within 
the doorway once more she dropped down, and instantly 
expired. Her murderer, who had followed her closely, 
now saw himself set at liberty for the pursuit of the boy. 
At this critical moment, all was at stake ; unless the 
boy were caught, the enterprise was ruined. He passed 
his brother, therefore, and the landlady without pausing, 
and rushed through the open door into the fields. By 
a single second, perhaps, he was too late. The boy 
was keenly aware, that if he continued in sight, he 
would have no chance of escaping from a powerful 
young man. He made, therefore, at once for a ditch, 
into which he tumbled headlong. Had the murderer 
ventured to make a leisurely examination of the nearest 
ditch, he would easily have found the boy — made so 
conspicuous by his white shirt. But he lost all heart, 
upon failing at once to arrest the boy's flight. And 
every succeeding second made his despair the greater. 
If the boy had really effected his escape to the neigh- 
boring farm-house, a party of men might be gathered 
witliin five minutes ; and already it might have become 
difficult for himself and his brother, unacquainted with 
the field paths, to evade being intercepted. Nothing 
remained, therefore, but to summon his brother away. 
Thus it happened that the landlady, though mangled, 
escaped with life, and eventually recovered. The land- 
lord owed his safety to the stupefying potion. And the 
baffled murderers had the misery of knowing that their 
dreadful crime had been altogether profitless. The 
road, indeed, was now open to the club-room ; and, 
probably, forty seconds would have sufficed to carry 
off" the box of treasure, which afterwards might have 
been burst open and pillaged at leisure. But the fear of 



70 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 

intercepting enemies was too strongly upon them ; ana 
they fled rapidly by a road which carried them actually 
within six feet of the lurking boy. That night they 
passed through Manchester. When daylight returned, 
they slept in a thicket twenty miles distant from the 
scene of their guilty attempt. On the second and tMrd 
nights, they pursued their march on foot, resting again 
during the day. About sunrise on the fourth morning, 
they were entering some village near Kirby Lonsdale, 
in Westmoreland. They must have designedly quitted 
the direct line of route ; for their object was Ayrshire, 
of which county they were natives ; and the regular 
road would have led them through Shap, Penrith, 
Carlisle. Probably they were seeking to elude the 
persecution of the stage-coaches, which, for the last 
thirty hours, had been scattering at all the inns and 
road-side cabarets hand-bills describing their persons 
and dress. It happened (perhaps through design) that 
on this fourth morning they had separated, so as to 
enter the village ten minutes apart from each other. 
They were exhausted and footsore. In this condition 
it was easy to stop them. A blacksmith had silently 
reconnoitred them, and compared their appearance 
with the description of the hand-bills. They were then 
easily overtaken, and separately arrested. Their trial 
and condemnation speedily followed at Lancaster; and 
in those days it followed, of course, that they were 
executed. Otherwise their case fell so far within the 
sheltering limits of what would now be regarded as 
extenuating circumstances — that, whilst a murder 
more or less was not to repel them from their object, 
very evidently they were anxious to economize the 
bloodshed as much as possible. Immeasurable, there- 



THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. 71 

fore, was the interval which divided them from the 
monster Williams. They perished on the scaffold ; 
Williams, as I have said, by his own hand ; and, in 
obedience to the law as it then stood, he was buried in 
the centre of a quadrivium^ or conflux of four roads (in 
this case four streets), with a stake driven through nia 
heart. And over him drives for ever the uproar of un- 
resting London ! 



THE TRUE RELATIONS OF THE BIBLE TO 
MERELY HUMAN SCIENCE. 



It is sometimes said, that a religious messenger from 
God does not come amongst men for the sake of teach- 
ing truths in science, or of correcting errors in science. 
Most justly is this said : but often in terms far too 
feeble. For generally these terms are such as to 
imply, that, although no direct and imperative function 
of his mission, it was yet open to him, as a permissible 
function — that, although not pressing with the force 
of an obligation upon the missionary, it was yet at his 
discretion — if not to correct other men's errors, yet 
at least in his own person to speak with scientific pre- 
cision. I contend that it was not. I contend, that to 
have uttered the truths of astronomy, of geology, &c., 
at the era of new-born Christianity, was not only 
below and beside the purposes of a religion, but would 
have been against them. Even upon errors of a far 
more important class than errors in science can ever 
be — superstitions, for instance, that degraded the very 
idea of God ; prejudices and false usages, that laid 
waste human happiness (such as slavery, and many 
hundreds of other abuses that might be mentioned), 
the rule evidently acted upon by the Founder of Chris- 
tianity was this — Given the purification of the well- 
head, once assumed that the fountains of truth are 

[72] 



THE TRUE RELATIONS OF THE BIBLE, ETC. 73 

cleansed, all these derivative currents of evil will 
cleanse themselves. As a general rule, the branches 
of error were disregarded, and the roots only attacked. 
If, then, so lofty a station was taken with regard even 
to such errors as really had moral and spiritual rela- 
tions, how much more with regard to the comparative 
trifles (as in the ultimate relations of human nature 
they are) of merely human science ! But, for my 
part, I go further, and assert, that upon three reasons 
it was impossible for any messenger from God (or 
offering himself in that character) to have descended 
into the communication of truth merely scientific, or 
economic, or worldly. And the three reasons are 
these : — First, Because such a descent would have 
degraded his mission, by lowering it to the base level 
of a collusion with human curiosity, or (in the most 
favorable case) of a collusion with petty and transitory 
interests. Secondly, Because it would have ruined his 
mission, by disturbing its free agency, and misdirecting 
its energies, in two separate modes : first, by destroy- 
ing the spiritual auctoritas (the prestige and consider- 
ation) of the missionary ; secondly, by vitiating the 
spiritual atmosphere of his audience — that is, cor- 
rupting and misdirecting the character of their thoughts 
and expectations. He that in the early days of Chris- 
tianity should have proclaimed the true theory of the 
solar system, or that by any chance word or allusion 
should then, in a condition of man so little prepared 
to receive such truths, have asserted or assumed the 
daily motion of the earth on its own axis, or its annual 
motion round the sun, would have found himself en- 
tangled at once and irretrievably in the following 
unmanageable consequences: — First of all, and in- 
7 



74 THE TRUE RELATIONS OF THE BIBLE 

stantaneously, he would have been roused to the alarm 
ing fact, that, by this dreadful indiscretion he himself, 
the professed deliverer of a new and spiritual religion, 
had in a moment untuned the spirituality of his audi- 
ence. He would find that he had awakened within 
them the passion of curiosity — the most unspiritual 
of passions, and of curiosity in a fierce polemic shape. 
The very safest step in so deplorable a situation would 
be, instantly to recant. Already by this one may 
estimate the evil, when such would be its readiest 
palliation. For in what condition would the reputation 
of the teacher be left for discretion and wisdom as an 
intellectual guide, when his first act must be to recant 
— and to recant what to the whole body of his hearers 
would wear the character of a lunatic proposition. 
Such considerations might possibly induce him not to 
recant. But in that case the consequences are far 
worse. Having once allowed himself to sanction what 
nis hearers regard as the most monstrous of paradoxes, 
he has no liberty of retreat open to him. He must 
stand to the promises of his own acts. Uttering the 
first truth of a science, he is pledged to the second ; 
taking the main step, he is committed to all which 
follow. He is thrown at once upon the endless con- 
troversies which science in every stage provokes, and 
in none more than in the earliest. Starting, besides, 
from the authority of a divine mission, he could not 
(as others might) have the privilege of selecting arbi- 
trarily or partially. If upon one science, then upon 
all ; if upon science, then upon art ; if upon art and 
science, then upon every branch of social economy 
his reformations and advances are equally due — due 
as to all, if due as to any. To move in one direction, 



TO MERELY HITMAN SCIENCE. 75 

is constructively to undertake for all. Without power 
to retreat, he has thus thrown the intellectual interests 
of his followers into a channel utterly alien to the 
purposes of a spiritual mission. 

The spiritual mission, therefore, the purpose for 
which only the religious teacher was sent, has now 
perished altogether — overlaid and confounded by the 
merely scientific wranglings to which his own incon- 
siderate precipitance has opened the door. But sup- 
pose at this point that the teacher, aware at length of 
the mischief which he has caused, and seeing that the 
fatal error of uttering one solitary novel truth upon a 
matter of mere science is by inevitable consequence 
to throw him upon a road leading altogether away 
from the proper field of his mission, takes the laudable 
course of confessing his error, and of attempting a 
return into his proper spiritual province. This may be 
his best course ; yet, after all, it will not retrieve his 
lost ground. He returns with a character confessedly 
damaged. His very excuse rests upon the blindness 
and shortsightedness which forbade his anticipating the 
true and natural consequences. Neither will his own 
account of the case be generally accepted. He will 
not be supposed to retreat from further controversy, as 
inconsistent with spiritual purposes, but because he 
finds nimsclf unequal to the dispute. And, in the 
very best case, he is, by his own acknowledgment, 
tainted with human infirmity. He has been ruined for 
a servant of inspiration ; and how ? By a process, let 
it be remembered, of which all the steps are inevitable 
under the same agency : that is, in the case of any 
primitive Christian teacher having attempted to speak 
the language of scientific truth in dealing with the 



76 THE TRITE RELATIONS OF THE BIBLE 

phenomena of astronomy, geology, or of any merely 
h iman knowledge. 

Now, thirdly and lastly, in order to try the question 
in an extreme form, let it be supposed that, aided by 
powers of working miracles, some early apostle of 
Christianity should actually have succeeded in carrying 
through the Copernican system of astronomy, as an 
article of blind belief, sixteen centuries before the pro- 
gress of man's intellect had qualified him for naturally 
developing that system. What, in such a case, would 
be the true estimate and valuation of the achievement ? 
Simply this, that he had thus succeeded in cancelling 
and counteracting a determinate scheme of divine dis- 
cipline and training for man. Wherefore did God 
give to man the powers for contending with scientific 
difficulties ? Wherefore did he lay a secret train of 
continual occasions, that should rise, by relays, through 
scores of generations, for provoking and developing 
those activities in man's intellect, if, after all, he is to 
send a messenger of his own, more than human, to 
intercept and strangle all these great purposes ? This 
is to mistake the very meaning and purposes of a reve- 
lation. A revelation is not made for the purpose of 
showing to indolent men that which, by faculties al- 
ready given to them, they may show to themselves ; 
no : but for the purpose of showing that which the 
moral darkness of man will not, without supernatural 
light, allow him to perceive. With disdain, therefore, 
must every thoughtful person regard the notion, that 
God could wilfully interfere with his own plans, by 
accrediting ambassadors to reveal astronomy, or any 
other science, which he has commanded men, by 
qualifying men, to reveal for themselves. 



TO MERELY HUMAN SCIENCE. 77 

Even as regards astronomy — a science so nearly 
allying itself to religion by the loftiness and by the 
purity of its contemplations — Scripture is nowhere 
the parent of any doctrine, nor so much as the silent 
sanctioner of any doctrine. It is made impossible for 
Scripture to teach falsely, by the simple fact that 
Scripture, on such subjects, will not condescend to 
teach at all. The Bible adopts the erroneous language 
of men (which at any rate it must do, in order to make 
itself understood), not by way of sanctioning a theory, 
but by way of using a fact. The Bible, for instance. 
uses (postulates) the phenomena of day and night, of 
summer and winter ; and, in relation to their causes, 
speaks by the same popular and inaccurate language 
which is current for ordinary purposes, even amongst 
the most scientific of astronomers. For the man of 
science, equally with the populace, talks of the sun as 
rising and setting, as having finished half his day's 
journey, &c., and, without pedantry, could not in 
many cases talk otherwise. But the results, which are 
all that concern Scripture, are equally true, whether 
accounted for by one hypothesis which is philosophi- 
cally just, or by another which is popular and erring. 

Now, on the other hand, in geology and cosmology, 
the case is stronger. Here there is no opening for a 
compliance even with a language that is erroneous; 
for no language at all is current upon subjects that 
have never engaged the popular attention. Here., 
where there is no such stream of apparent phenomena 
running counter (as in astronomy there is) to the real 
phenomena, neither is there any popular language op- 
posed to the scientific. The whole are abtruse specu- 
lations, even as regards their objects, nor dreamed of 



78 THE TRUE RELATIONS OF THE BIBLE 

as possibilities, either in their true aspects or their false 
aspects, till modern times. The Scriptures, therefore, 
nowhere allude to such sciences, either as taking the 
shape of histories, applied to processes current and in 
movement, or as taking the shape of theories appliea 
to processes past and accomplished. The Mosaic cos- 
mogony, indeed, gives the succession of natural births . 
and probably the general outline of such a succession 
will be more and more confirmed as geology ad- 
vances. But as to the time, the duration, of this suc- 
cessive evolution, it is the idlest of notions that the 
Scriptures either have, or could have, condescended to 
human curiosity upon so awful a prologue to the 
drama of this world. Genesis would no more have 
indulged so mean a passion with respect to the myste- 
rious inauguration of the world, than the Apocalypse 
with respect to its mysterious close, ' Yet the six days 
of Moses ! ' Days ! But is it possible that human 
folly should go the length of understanding by the 
Mosaical day, the mysterious day of that awful agency 
which moulded the heavens and the heavenly host, no 
more than the ordinary nychthemeron or cycle of 
twenty-four hours ? The period implied in a day, 
when used in relation to the inaugural manifestation 
of creative power in that vast drama which introduces 
God to man in the character of a demiurgus or creator 
of the world, indicated one stage amongst six ; in- 
volvmg probably many millions of years. The silliest 
of nurses, in her nursery babble, could hardly suppose 
that the mighty process began on a Monday morning, 
and ended on Saturday night. If we are seriously to 
study the value and scriptural acceptation of scriptural 
«rords and phrases, I presume that our first business 



TO MERELY HUMAN SCIENCE. 79 

Will be to collate the use of these words in one part 
of Scripture, with their use in other parts, holding the 
same spiritual relations. The creation, for instance, 
docs not belong to the earthly or merely historical 
records, but to the spiritual records of the Bible ; to 
the same category, therefore, as the prophetic sections 
of the Bible. Now, in those, and in the Psalms, how 
do we understand the word day ? Is any man sq 
little versed in biblical language as not to know, thai 
(except in the merely historical parts of the Jewish 
records) every section of time has a secret and sepa- 
rate acceptation in the Scriptures ? Does an ceon, 
though a Grecian word, bear scripturally (either in 
Daniel or in St. John) any sense known to Grecian 
ears ? Do the seventy weeks of the prophet mean 
weeks in the sense of human calendars ? Already the 
Psalms (xc), already St. Peter (2d Epist.), warn us 
of a peculiar sense attached to the word day in divine 
ears. And who of the innumerable interpreters un- 
derstands the twelve hundred and sixty days in Dan- 
iel, or his two thousand and odd days, to mean, by 
possibility, periods of twenty-four hours ? Surely the 
theme of Moses was as mystical, and as much entitled 
to the benefit of mystical language, as that of the 
prophets. 

The sum of this matter is this : — God, by a He- 
brew prophet, is sublimely described as the Reveahr ; 
and, in variation of his own expression, the same pro- 
phet describes him as the Being ' that knoweth the 
darkness.' Under no idea can the relations of God to 
man be more grandly expressed. But of what is he 
the revealer ? Not surely of those things which he has 
enabled man to reveal for himself, but of those things 



80 THE TEUE RELATIONS OF THE BIBLE, ETC. 

which, were it not through special light from heaven, 
must eternally remain sealed up in inaccessible 
darkness. On this principle we should all laugh at a 
revealed cookery. But essentially the same ridicule, 
not more, and not less, applies to a revealed astron- 
omy, or a revealed geology. As a fact, there is no 
such astronomy or geology : as a possibility, by the 
a priori argument which I have used (viz., that a 
revelation on such fields would counteract other ma- 
chineries of providence), there can be no such astro- 
nomy or geology in the Bible. Consequently there is 
none. Consequently there can be no schism or feud 
upon these subjects between the Bible and the philoso- 
phies outside. 



SCHLOSSER'S LITERARY HISTORY OF THE 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

In the person of this Mr. Schlosser is exemplified a 
common abuse, not confined to literature. An artist 
from the Italian opera of London and Paris, making a 
professional excursion to our provinces, is received 
according to the tariff of the metropolis ; no one being 
bold enough to dispute decisions coming down from the 
courts above. In that particular case there is seldom 
any reason to complain — since really out of Germany 
and Italy there is no city, if you except Paris and 
London, possessing materials, in that field of art, for 
the composition of an audience large enough to act as 
a court of revision. It would be presumption in the 
provincial audience, so slightly trained to good music 
and dancing, if it should affect to reverse a judgment 
ratified in the supreme capital. The result, therefore, 
is practically just, if the original verdict was just ; 
what was right from the first cannot be made wrong 
by iteration. Yet, even in such a case, there is some- 
thing not satisfactory to a delicate sense of equity ; for 
the artist returns from the tour as if from some new 
and independent triumph, whereas, all is but the 
reverberation of an old one ; it seems a new access 
of sunlight, whereas it is but a reflex illumination fron» 
satellites. 

[81] 



82 schlosser's liteeaky history 

In literature the corresponding case is worse. An 
author, passing by means of translation before a foreign 
people, ought de jure to find himself before a new 
tribunal ; but de facto, he does not. Like the opera 
artist, but not with the same propriety, he comes before 
a court that never interferes to disturb a judgment, but 
only to re-affirm it. And he returns to his native 
country, quartering in his armorial bearings these new 
trophies, as though won by new trials, when, in fact 
they are due to servile ratifications of old ones. When 
Sue, or Balzac, Hugo, or George Sand, comes before 
an English audience — the opportunity is invariably 
lost for estimating them at a new angle of sight. All 
who dislike them lay them aside — whilst those only 
apply themselves seriously to their study, who are 
predisposed to the particular key of feeling, through 
which originally these authors had prospered. And 
thus a new set of judges, that might usefully have 
modified the narrow views of the old ones, fall by 
mere inertia into the humble character of echoes 
and sounding-boards to swell the uproar of the original 
mob. 

In this way is thrown away the opportunity, not only 
of applying corrections to false national tastes, but 
oftentimes even to the unfair accidents of luck that 
befall books. For it is well known to all who watch 
literature with vigilance, that books and authors have 
their fortunes, which travel upon a far different scale 
of proportions from those that measure their merits. 
Not even the caprice or the folly of the reading public 
is required to account for this. Very often, indeed, 
the whole difference between an extensive circulation 
fV>r one book, and none at all for another of about 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTTTRY. 83 

equal merit, belongs to no particular blindness in men, 
but to the simple fact, that the one has, whilst the 
other has not, been brought effectually under the eyes 
of the public. By far the greater part of books are 
lost, not because they arc rejected, but because they 
are never introduced. In any proper sense of the 
word, very few books are published. Technically they 
are published ; which means, that for six or ten times 
they arc advertised, but they are not made known to 
attentive ears, or to ears prepared for attention. And 
amongst the causes which account for this difference in 
the fortune of books, although there are many, we 
may reckon, as foremost, personal accidents of position 
in the authors. For instance, with us in England it 
will do a bad book no ultimate service, that it is 
written by a lord, or a bishop, or a privy counsellor, or 
a member of Parliament — though, undoubtedly, it will 
do an instant service — it will sell an edition or so. 
This being the case, it being certain that no rank will 
reprieve a bad writer from Jinal condemnation, the 
sycophantic glorifier of the public fancies his idol 
justified ; but not so. A bad book, it is true, will not 
be saved by advantages of position in the author ; but 
a book moderately good will be extravagantly aided by 
such advantages. Lectures on Christianity, that hap- 
pened to be respectably written and delivered, had 
prodigious success in my young days, because, also, 
they happened to be lectures of a prelate ; three times 
the ability would not have procured them any attention 
had they been the lectures of an obscure curate. Yet^ 
on the other hand, it is but justice to say, that, if 
written with three times less ability, lawn-sleeves would 
not have given them buoyancy, but, on the contrary 



84 schlosser's literary history 

they would have sunk the bishop irrecoverably ; whilst 
the curate, favored by obscurity, would have survived 
for another chance. So again, and indeed, more than 
so, as to poetry. Lord Carlisle, of the last generation, 
wrote tolerable verses. They were better than Lord 
Roscommon's, which, for one hundred and fifty years, 
the judicious public has allowed the booksellers to 
incorporate, along with other refuse of the seventeenth 
and eighteenth century, into the costly collections of 
the ' British Poets.' And really, if you will insist on 
odious comparisons, they were not so very much 
below the verses of an amiable prime minister known 
to us all. Yet, because they wanted vital stamina, not 
only they fell, but, in falling, they caused the earl to 
reel much more than any commoner would have done. 
Now, on the other hand, a kinsman of Lord Carlisle, 
viz., Lord Byron, because he brought real genius and 
power to the effort, found a vast auxiliary advantage 
in a peerage and a very ancient descent. On these 
double wings he soared into a region of public interest, 
far higher than ever he would have reached by poetic 
power alone. Not only all his rubbish — which in 
quantity is great — passed for jewels, but also what are 
incontestably jewels have been, and will be, valued at 
a far higher rate than if they had been raised from 
less aristocratic mines. So fatal for mediocrity, so 
gracious for real power, is any adventitious distinction 
from birth, station, or circumstances of brilliant noto- 
riety. In reality, the public, our never-sufficiently-to- 
be-respected mother, is the most unutterable sycophant 
that ever the clouds dropped their rheum upon. She 
is always ready for jacobmical scoffs at a man for 
being a lord, if he happens to fail ; she is always 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 85 

ready for toadying a lord, if he happens to make a hit. 
Ah, dear sycophantic old lady, I kiss your syco- 
phantic hands, and wish heartily that I were a duke 
for your sake ! 

It would be a mistake to fancy that this tendency to 
confound real merit and its accidents of position is at 
all peculiar to us or to our age. Dr. Sacheverell, by 
embarking his small capital of talent on the spring- 
tide of a furious political collision, brought back an 
ampler return for his little investment than ever did 
WicklifTe or Luther. Such was his popularity in the 
heart of love and the heart of hatred, that he would 
have been assassinated by the Whigs, on his triumphal 
progresses through England, had he not been canon- 
ized by the Tories. He was a dead man if he had not 
been suddenly gilt and lacquered as an idol. Neither 
is the case peculiar at all to England. Ronge, the 
ci-devant Romish priest (whose name pronounce as 
you would the English word wrong, supposing that it 
had for a second syllable the final a of ' sopha,' i. e., 
Wronguh), has been found a wrong-headed man by 
all parties, and in a venial degree is, perhaps, a stupid 
man ; but he moves about with more eclat by far than 
the ablest man in Germany. And, in days of old, the 
man that burned down a miracle of beauty, viz., the 
temple of Ephesus, protesting, with tears in his eyes, 
that he had no other way of getting himself a name, 
has got it in spite of us all. He's booked for a ride 
down all history, whether you and I like it or not. 
Every pocket dictionary knows that Erostratus was 
that scamp. So of Martin, the man that parboiled, or 
par-roasted York Minster some ten or twelve years 
back ; that fellow will float down to posterity with the 
annals of the glorious cathedral : ho will 



86 schlosser's literary history 

* Pursue the triumpli and partake the gale,' 

whilst the founders and benefactors of the Minster are 
practically forgotten. 

These incendiaries, in short, are as well known as 
Ephesus or York ; but not one of us can tell, without 
humming and hawing, who it was that rebuilt the 
Ephesian wonder of the world, or that repaired the 
time-honored Minster. Equally in literatux-e, not the 
weight of service done, or the power exerted, is some- 
times considered chiefly — either of these must be 
very conspicuous before it will be considered at all — 
but the splendor, or the notoriety, or the absurdity, or 
even the scandalousness of the circumstances^ sur- 
rounding the author. 

Schlosser must have benefitted in some such adven- 
titious way before he ever could have risen to his Ger- 
man celebrity. What was it that raised him to his 
momentary distinction? Was it something very wick- 
ed that he did, or something very brilliant that he 
said > I should rather conjecture that it must have 
been something inconceivably absurd which he pro- 
posed. Any one of the three achievements stands 
good in Germany for a reputation. But, however it 
were that Mr. Schlosser first gained his reputation, 
mark what now follows. On the wings of this equivo- 
cal reputation he flies abroad to Paris and London. 
There he thrives, not by any approving experience or 
knowledge of his works, but through blind faith in his 
original German public. And back he flies afterwards 
to Germany, as if carrying with him new and inde- 
pendent testimonies to his merit, and from two nations 
that are directly concerned in his violent judgments • 
whereas (which is the simple truth) he carries back a 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 87 

careless reverberation of his first German character, 
from t'.iose who have far too much to read for declininsx 
aid from vicarious criticism when it will spare that 
effort to themselves. Thus it is tliat German critics 
become audacious and libellous. Kohl, Von Raumer, 
Dr. Carus, physician to the King of Saxony, by means 
of introductory letters floating them into circles far 
above any they had seen in homely Germany, are 
qualified by our own negligence and indulgence for 
mounting a European tribunal, from which they pro- 
nounce malicious edicts against ourselves. Sentinels 
present arms to Von Raumer at Windsor, because he 
rides in a carriage of Queen Adelaide's ; and Von 
Raumer immediately conceives himself the Chancellor 
of all Christendom, keeper of the conscience to uni- 
versal Europe, upon all questions of art, manners, 
politics, or any conceivable intellectual relations of 
England. Schlosser meditates the same career. 

But have I any right to quote Schlosser's words 
from an English translation ? I do so only because 
this happens to be at hand, and the German not. Ger- 
man books are still rare in this country, though more 
(by one thousand to one) than they were thirty years 
ago. But I have a full right to rely on the English of 
Mr. Davison. ' I hold in my hand,' as gentlemen so 
often say at public meetings, ' a certificate from Herr 
Schlosser, that to quote Mr. Davison is to quote Jiim.^ 
The English translation is one which Mr. Schlosser 
*■ durchgclesen hat^undfur deren genauigkeit und rich- 
tigkeit er hurgt [has read through, and for the ac- 
curacy and propriety of which he pledges himself]. 
Mr. Schossler was so anxious for the spiritual wel- 
fare of us poor islanders, that he not only read if 



88 schlossee's liteeary histoetj 

through, but he has even aufmerksam durchgelesen it 
[read it through wide awake] und gepruft [and care 
fully examined it] ; nay, he has done all this in com- 
pany with the translator. ' Oh ye Athenians ! how 
hard do I labor to earn your applause ! ' And, as the 
result of such herculean labors, a second time he 
makes himself surety for its precision ; ' er hurgt also 
dafur wie fur seine eigne arheit ' [he guarantees it 
accordingly as he would his own workmanship]. Were 
it not for this unlimited certificate, I should have sent 
for the book to Germany. As it is, I need not wait ; 
and all complaints on this score I defy, above all from 
Herr Schlosser.^ 

In dealing with an author so desultory as Mr. 
Schlosser, the critic has a right to an extra allowance 
of desultoriness for his own share ; so excuse me, 
reader, for rushing at once in medias res. 

Of Swift, Mr. Schlosser selects for notice three 
works — the ' Drapier's Letters,' ' Gulliver's Travels,' 
and the ' Tale of a Tub.' With respect to the first, as 
it is a necessity of Mr. S. to be forever wrong in 
his substratum of facts, he adopts the old erroneous 
account of Wood's contract as to the copper coinage, 
and of the imaginary wrong which it inflicted on Ire- 
land. Of all Swift's villainies for the sake of popu- 
larity, and still more for the sake of wielding this 
popularity vindictively, none is so scandalous as this. 
In any new life of Swift the case must be stated de 
novo. Even Sir Walter Scott is not impartial ; and 
for the same reason as now forces me to blink it, viz., 
the difficulty of presenting the details in a readable 
shape. ' Gulliver's Travels ' Schlosser strangely con- 
siders ' spun out to an intolerable extent.' Many evil 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 89 

things might be said of Gulliver ; but not this. The 
captain is anything but tedious. And, indeed, it be- 
comes a question of mere mensuration, that can be 
settled in a moment. A year or two since I had in 
my hands a pocket edition, comprehending all the four 
parts of the worthy skipper's adventures within a sin- 
gle volume of 420 pages. Some part of the space was 
a'so wasted on notes, often very idle. Now the 1st 
part contains two separate voyages (Lilliput and Ble- 
fuscu), the 2d, one, the 3d, Jive, and the 4th, one ; so 
that, in all, this active navigator, who has enriched 
geography, I hope, with something of a higher quality 
than your old muffs that thought much of doubling 
Cape Horn, here gives us nine great discoveries, far 
more surprising than the pretended discoveries of Sin- 
bad (which are known to be fabulous), averaging quam 
proadme, forty-seven small 16mo pages each. Oh you 
unconscionable German, built round in your own 
country with circumvallations of impregnable 4tos, 
oftentimes dark and dull as Avernus — that you will 
have the face to describe dear excellent Captain 
Lemuel Gulliver of RedrifT, and subsequently of New- 
ark, that ' darling of children and men,' as tedious. It 
is exactly because he is not tedious, because he does 
not shoot into German foliosity, that Schlosser finds 
him ' intolerable.'' I have justly transferred to Gul- 
liver's use the words originally applied by the poet to 
the robin-redbreast, for it is remarkable that Gulliver 
and the Arabian Nights are amongst the few books 
where children and men find themselves meetingr and 
jostling each other. This was the case from its first 
publication, just one hundred and twenty years *ince. 
* It was received,' says Dr. Johnson, ' witb surb 
8 



90 schlosser's literary history 

avidity, that the price of the first edition was raised 
before the second could be made — it was read by tho 
high and the low, the learned and the illiterate. Crit- 
icism was lost in wonder. Now, on the contrary, 
Schlosser wonders not at all, but simply criticises ; 
which we could bear, if the criticism were even in- 
genious. Whereas, he utterly misunderstands Swift, 
and is a malicious calumniator of the captain who, 
luckily, roaming in Sherwood, and thinking, often 
with a sigh, of his little nurse,3 Glumdalclitch, would 
trouble himself slightly about what Heidelberg might 
say in the next century. There is but one example on 
our earth of a novel received with such indiscriminate 
applause as ' Gulliver ; ' and that was ' Don Quixote.' 
Many have been welcomed joyfully by a class — these 
two by a people. Now, could that have happened had 
it been characterized by dulness ? Of all faults, it 
could least have had that. As to the ' Tale of a Tub,' 
Schlosser is in such Cimmerian vapors that no 
system of bellows could blow open a shaft or tube 
through which he might gain a glimpse of the English 
truth and daylight. It is useless talking to such a man 
on such a subject. I consign him to the attentions of 
some patriotic Irishman. 

Schlosser, however, is right in a graver reflection 
which he makes upon the prevailing philosophy of 
Swift, viz., that ' all his views were directed towards 
what was immediately beneficial, which is the charac- 
teristic of savages.' This is undeniable. The mean- 
ness of Swift's nature, and his rigid incapacity for 
dealing with the grandeurs of the human spirit, with 
religion, with poetry, or even with science, when it 
rose above the mercenary practical, is absolutely ap- 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 91 

palling. His own yahoo is not a more abominable 
one-sided degradation of humanity, than is he himself 
under this aspect. And, perhaps, it places this inca- 
pacity of his in its strongest light, when we recur to 
the fact of his astonishment at a religious princess re- 
fusing to confer a bishoprick upon one that had treated 
the Trinity, and all the profoundest mysteries of Chris- 
tianity, not with mere scepticism, or casual sneer, but 
with set pompous merriment and farcical buffoonery. 
This dignitary of the church. Dean of the most con- 
spicuous cathedral in Ireland, had, in full canonicals, 
made himself into a regular mountebank, for the sake 
of giving fuller effect, by the force of contrast, to the 
silliest of jests directed against all that was most 
inalienable from Christianity. Ridiculing such things, 
could he, in any just sense, be thought a Christian ? 
But, as Schlosser justly remarks, even ridiculing the 
peculiarities of Luther and Calvin as he did ridicule 
them, Swift could not be thought other than constitu- 
tionally incapable of religion. Even a Pagan philoso- 
pher, if made to understand the case, would be inca- 
pable of scoffing at any form, natural or casual, simple 
or distorted, which might be assumed by the most 
solemn of problems — problems that rest with the 
weight of worlds upon the human spirit — 

* Fix'd fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute.' 

tlie destiny of man, or the relations of man to God. 
Anger, therefore. Swift might feel, and he felt it * to 
the end of his most wretched life ; but what reasonable 
ground had a man of sense for astonishment — that a 
princess, who (according to her knowledge) was sin- 

♦ See his bitter letters to Lady Suffolk. 



92 schlosser's literary history 

cerely pious, should decline to place such a man upon 
an Episcopal throne ? This argues, beyond a doubt, 
that Swift was in that state of constitutional irreligion, 
irreligion from a vulgar temperament, which imputes 
to everybody else its own plebeian feelings. People 
differed, he fancied, not by more and less religion, but 
by more and less dissimulations. And, therefore, it 
seemed to him scandalous that a princess, who must, 
of course, in her heart regard (in common with him- 
self) all mysteries as solemn masques and mummeries, 
should pretend in a case of downright serious business, 
to pump up, out of dry conventional hoaxes, any solid 
objection to a man of his shining merit. ' The Trinity,'' 
for instance, that he viewed as the password, which 
the knowing ones gave in answer to the challenge of 
the sentinel ; but, as soon as it had obtained admission 
for the party within the gates of the camp, it was 
rightly dismissed to oblivion or to laughter. No case 
so much illustrates Swift's essential irreligion ; since, 
if he had shared in ordinary human feelings on such 
subjects, not only he could not have been surprised at 
his own exclusion from the bench of bishops, after 
such ribaldries, but originally he would have abstained 
from them as inevitable bars to clerical promotion, 
even upon principles of public decorum. 

As to the style of Swift, Mr. Schlosser shows him- 
self without sensibility in his objections, as the often 
hackneyed English reader shows himself without phi- 
losophic knowledge of style in his applause. Schlosser 
thinks the style of Gulliver ' somewhat dull.' This 
shows Schlosser's presumption in speaking upon a 
point where he wanted, 1st, original delicacy of tact ; 
and, 2dly, familiar knowledge of English. Gulliver's 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 93 

Style is purposely touched slightly with that dulness of 
circumstantiality which besets the excellent, but ' some- 
what dull' race of men — old sea captains. "Yet it 
wears only an aerial tint of dulness ; the felicity of 
this coloring in Swift's management is, that it never 
goes the length of wearying, but only of giving a 
comic air of downright Wapping and Rotherhithe 
verisimilitude. All men grow dull, and ought to be 
dull, that live under a solemn sense of eternal danger, 
one inch only of plank (often worm-eaten) between 
themselves and the grave ; and, also, that see for ever 
one wilderness of waters — sublime, but (like the wil- 
derness on shore) monotonous. All sublime people, 
being monotonous, have a tendency to be dull, and 
sublime things also. Milton and iEschylus, the 
sublimest of men, are crossed at times by a shade of 
dulness. It is their weak side. But as to a sea cap- 
tain, a regular nor'-nor'-wester, and sou'-sou'-easter, 
he ought to be kicked out of the room if he is not dull. 
It is not ' ship-shape,' or barely tolerable, that he 
should be otherwise. Yet, after all, considering what 
I have stated about Captain Gulliver's nine voyages 
crowding into one pocket volume, he cannot really 
have much abused his professional license for being 
dull. Indeed, one has to look out an excuse for his 
being so little dull ; which excuse is found in the fact 
that he had studied three years at a learned university. 
Captain Gulliver, though a sailor, I would have you to 
know, was a gownsman of Cambridge : so says Swift, 
who knew more about the Captain than dnybody now- 
a-days. Cantabs are all horsemen, ergo, Gulliver was 
fit for any thing, from the wooden shoon of Cambridge 
up to the Horse Marines. 



94 schlosser's literary history 

Now, on the other hand, you, common-place reader, 
that (as an old tradition) believe Swift's style to be a 
model of excellence, hereafter I shall say a word to 
you, drawn from deeper principles. At present I con- 
tent myself with these three propositions, which over- 
throw if you can ; — 

1. That the merit, which justly you ascribe to Swift, 
is vernacular ity ; he never forgets his mother- tongue 
in exotic forms, unless we may call Irish exotic ; for 
Hibernicisms he certainly has. This merit, however, 
is exhibited — not, as you fancy, in a graceful artless- 
ness, but in a coarse inartificiality. To be artless, and 
to be inartificial, are very different things ; as diiferent 
as being natural and being gross ; as different as being 
simple and being homely. 

2. That whatever, meantime, be the particular sort 
of excellence, or the value of the excellence, in the 
style of Swift, he had it in common with multitudes 
beside of that age. De Foe wrote a style for all the 
world the same as to kind and degree of excellence, 
only pure from Hibernicisms. So did every honest 
skipper [Dampier was something more] who had occa- 
sion to record his voyages in this world of storms. So 
did many a hundred of religious writers. And what 
wonder should there be in this, when the main qualifi- 
cation for such a style was plain good sense, natural 
feeling, unpretendingness, some little scholarly practice 
in putting together the clockwork of sentences, so as to 
avoid mechanical awkwardness of construction, but 
above all the advantage of a subject, such in its nature 
as instinctively to reject ornament, lest it should draw 
off attention from itself ? Such subjects are common ; 
but grand impassioned subjects insist upon a different 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 95 

treatment ; and there it is that the true difficulties of 
style commence. 

3. [Which partly is suggested by the last remark.] 
That nearly all the blockheads with whom I have at any 
time had the pleasure of conversing upon the subject of 
style (and pardon me for saying that men of the most 
sense are apt, upon two subjects, viz., poetry and style, 
to talk most like blockheads), have invariably regarded 
Swift's style not as if relatively good [t. e. given a 
proper subject], but as if absolutely good — good un- 
conditionally, no matter what the subject. Now, my 
friend, suppose the case, that the Dean had been re- 
quired to write a pendant for Sir Walter Raleigh's im- 
mortal apostrophe to Death, or to many passages that I 
will select in Sir Thomas Brown's ' Religio Medici,' 
and his ' Urn-burial,' or to Jeremy Taylor's inaugural 
sections of his ' Holy Living and Dying,' do you know 
what would have happened } Are you aware what sort 
of ridiculous figure your poor bald Jonathan would have 
cut ? About the same that would be cut by a forlorn 
scullion or waiter from a greasy eating-house at Rotter- 
dam, if suddenly called away in vision to act as senes- 
chal to the festival of Belshazzar the king, before a 
thousand of his lords, 

Schlosser, after saying any thing right and true (and 
he really did say the true thing about Swift's essential 
irreligion), usually becomes exhausted, like a boa-con- 
strictor after eating his half-yearly dinner. The boa 
gathers himself up, it is to be hoped for a long fit of 
dyspepsy, in which the horns and hoofs that he has 
swallowed may chance to avenge the poor goat that 
owned them. Schlosser, on the other hand, retires 
into a corner, for the purpose of obstinately talking 



96 sohlosser's literary histort 

nonsense, until the gong sounds again for a slight re- 
fection of sense. Accordingly he likens Swift, before 
he has done with him, to whom ? I might safely allow 
the reader three years for guessing, if the greatest of 
wagers were depending between us. He likens him to 
Kotzebue, in the first place. How faithful the resem- 
blance ! How exactly Swift reminds you of Count 
Benyowski in Siberia, and of Mrs. Haller moping her 
eyes in the ' Stranger ! ' One really is puzzled to say, 
according to the negro's logic, whether Mrs. Haller is 
more like the Dean of St. Patrick's, or the Dean more 
like Mrs. Haller. Anyhow, the likeness is prodigious, 
if it is not quite reciprocal. The other terminus of the 
comparison is Wieland. Now there is some shadow 
of a resemblance there. For Wieland had a touch of 
the comico-cynical in his nature ; and it is notorious 
that he was often called the German Voltaire, which 
argues some tiger-monkey grin that traversed his fea- 
tures at intervals. Wieland's malice, however, was 
far more playful and genial than Swift's ; something of 
this is shown in his romance of ' Idris,' and oftentimes 
in his prose. But what the world knows Wieland by is 
his ' Oberon.' Now in this gay, musical romance of 
Sir Huon and his enchanted horn, with its gleams of 
voluptuousness, is there a possibility that any sugges- 
tion of a scowling face like Swift's should cross the 
festal scenes } 

From Swift the scene changes to Addison and 
Steele. Steele is of less importance ; for, though a 
man of greater intellectual activity 4 than Addison, he 
had far less of genius. So I turn him out, as one would 
turn out upon a heath a ram that had missed his way 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 97 

into one's tulip preserve ; requesting him to fight for 
himself against Schlosser, or others that may molest 
him. But, so far as concerns Addison, I am happy to 
support the character of Schlosser for consistency, by 
assuring the reader that, of all the monstrosities uttered 
by any man upon Addison, and of all the monstrosities 
uttered by Schlosser upon any man, a thing which he 
says about Addison is the worst. But this I reserve for 
a climax at the end. Schlosser really puts his best leg 
foremost at starting, and one thinks he's going to mend ; 
for he catches a truth, viz., the following — that all the 
brilliances of the Queen Anne period (which so many 
inconsiderate people have called the Augustan age of 
our literature) 'point to this — that the reading public 
tvished to be entertained, not roused to think ; to be 
gently moved, not deeply excited.' Undoubtedly what 
strikes a man in Addison, or will strike him when indi- 
cated, is the coyness and timidity, almost the girlish 
shame, which he betrays in the presence of all the ele- 
mentary majesties belonging to impassioned or idealized 
nature. Like one bred in crowded cities, when first 
left alone in forests or amongst mountains, he is fright- 
ened at their silence, their solitude, their magnitude of 
form, or their frowning glooms. It has been remarked 
by others that Addison and his companions never rise 
to the idea of addressing the ' nation ' or the ' people ; ' 
It is always the ' town.' Even their audience was con- 
ceived of by them under a limited form. Yet for this 
they had some excuse in the state of facts. A man 
would like at this moment to assume that Europe and 
Asia were listening to him ; and as some few copies of 
his book do really go to Paris and Naples, some to 
Calcutta, there is a sort of legal fiction that such aa 
9 



98 schlosser's literary history 



1 



assumption is steadily taking root. Yet, unhappily, that 
ugly barrier of languages interferes. Schamyl, the 
Circassian chief, though much of a savage, is not so 
wanting in taste and discernment as to be backward in 
reading any book of yours or mine. Doubtless he 
yearns to read it. But then, you see, that infernal 
Tchirkass language steps between our book, the dar- 
ling, and him, the discerning reader. Now, just such a 
barrier existed for the Spectator in the travelling ar- 
rangements of England. The very few old heavies 
that had begun to creep along three or four main roads, 
depended so much on wind and weather, their chances 
of foundering were so uncalculated, their periods of 
revolution were so cometary and uncertain, that no 
body of scientific observations had yet been collected 
to warrant a prudent man in risking a heavy bale of 
goods ; and, on the whole, even for York, Norwich, or 
Winchester, a consignment of ' Specs ' was not quite a 
safe spec. Still, I could have told the Spectator who 
was anxious to make money, where he might have 
been sure of a distant sale, though returns would have 
been slow, viz., at Oxford and Cambridge. We know 
from Milton that old Hobson delivered his parcels 
pretty regularly eighty years before 1710. And, one 
generation before that, it is plain, by the interesting 
(though somewhat Jacobinical) letters ^ of Joseph Mede, 
the commenter on the Apocalypse, that news and poli- 
tics of one kind or other (and scandal of every kind) 
found out for themselves a sort of contraband lungs to 
breathe through between London and Cambridge ; not 
quite so regular in their systole and diastole as the tides 
of ebb and flood, but better than nothing. If you con- 
signed a packet into the proper hands on the 1st of 



OP THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 99 

May, ' as sure as death ' to speak Scottice) it would be 
delivered within sixty miles of the capital before mid- 
summer. Still there were delays ; and these forced a 
man into carving his world out of London. That 
excuses the word town. 

Inexcusable, however, were many other forms of ex- 
pression in those days, which argued cowardly feel- 
ings. One would like to see a searching investigatioi? 
into the state of society in Anne's days — its extreme 
artificiality, its sheepish reserve upon all the impas- 
sioned grandeurs, its shameless outrages upon all the 
decencies of human nature. Certain it is, that Addi- 
son (because everybody) was in that meanest of condi- 
tions which blushes at any expression of sympathy with 
the lovely, the noble, or the impassioned. The wretches 
were ashamed of their own nature, and perhaps with 
reason ; for in their own denaturalized hearts they read 
only a degraded nature. Addison, in particular, shrank 
from every bold and every profound expression as from 
an offence against good taste. He durst not for his life 
have used the word ' passion ' except in the vulgar sense 
of an angry paroxysm. He durst as soon have danced 
a hornpipe on the top of the ' monument ' as have 
talked of a ' rapturous emotion.' What would he have 
said ? Why, ' sentiments that were of a nature to prove 
agreeable after an unusual rate.' In their odiou3 
verses, the creatures of that age talk of love as some- 
thing that 'bums' them. You suppose at first that 
they are discoursing of tallow candles, though you can 
not imagine by what impertinence they address yoti 
that are no tallow-chandler, upon such painful subjects 
And, when they apostrophize the woman of their heart 
(for you are to understand that they pretend to such an 



100 schlosser's literary history 

organ), they beseech her to 'ease their pain.' Can 
human meanness descend lower ? As if the man, being 
ill from pleurisy, therefore had a right to take a lady for 
one of the dressers in an hospital, whose duty it would 
be to fix a burgundy-pitch plaster between his shoulders. 
Ah, the monsters ! Then to read of their Phillises and 
Strephons, and Chloes, and Corydons — names that, by 
their very non-reality amongst names of flesh and blood 
proclaim the fantasticalness of the life with which they 
are poetically connected — it throws me into such con- 
vulsions of rage, that I move to the window, and (with- 
out thinking what I am about) throwing it up, calling, 
' Police ! police ! ' What's that for ? What can the 
police do in the business ? Why, certainly nothing. 
What I meant in my dream was, perhaps [but one for- 
gets loliat one meant upon recovering one's temper], 
that the police should take Strephon and Corydon into 
custody, whom I fancied at the other end of the room. 
And really the justifiable fury, that arises upon recalling 
such abominable attempts at bucolic sentiments in such 
abominable language, sometimes transports me into a 
luxurious vision sinking back through one hundred and 
thirty years, in which I see Addison, Phillips, both John 
and Ambrose, Tickell, Fickell, Budgell, and Cudgell, 
with many others beside, all- cudgelled in a round robin, 
none claiming precedency of another, none able to 
shrink from his own dividend, until a voice seems to 
recall me to milder thoughts by saying, ' But surely, 
my friend, you never could wish to see Addison cudg- 
elled ? Let Strephon and Corydon be cudgelled with- 
out end, if the police can show any warrant for doing 
it But Addison was a man of great genius.' True, 
he was so. I recollect it sudden !y, and will back out 



I 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 101 

of any angry things that I have been misled into saying 
by Schlosser, who, by-the-bye, was right, after all, for 
a wonder. 

But now I will turn my whole fury in vengeance 
up^n Schlosser. And, looking round for a stone to 
throw at him, I observe this. Addison could not be so 
entirely careless of exciting the public to think and 
feel, as Schlosser pretends, when he took so much 
pains to inoculate that public with a sense of the Mil- 
tonic grandeur. The 'Paradise Lost' had then been 
published barely forty years, which was nothing in an 
age without reviews ; the editions were still scanty ; 
and though no Addison could eventually promote, for 
the instant he quickened, the circulation. If I recol- 
lect, Tonson's accurate revision of the text followed 
immediately upon Addison's papers. And it is certain 
that Addison 6 must have diffused the knowledge of 
Milton upon the continent, from signs that soon fol- 
lowed. But does not this prove that I myself have 
been in the wrong as well as Schlosser ? No : that 's 
impossible. Schlosser 's always in the wrong; but it's 
the next thing to an impossibility that I should be de- 
tected in an error : philosophically speaking, it is sup- 
posed to involve a contradiction. ' But surely I said 
the very same thing as Schlosser by assenting to what 
he said.' Maybe I did : but then I have time to make 
a distinction, because my article is not yet finished ; 
we are only at page six or seven ; whereas Schlosser 
can't make any distinction now, because his book's 
printed; and his list of errata (which is shocking 
though he does not confess to the thousandth part), is 
actually published. My distinction is — that, though 
Addison generally hated the impassioned, and shrank 



102 



SCHLOSSER S LITERARY HISTORY 



from it as from a fearful thing, yet this was when it 
combined with forms of life and fleshy realities (as 
in dramatic works), but not when it combined with 
elder forms of eternal abstractions. Hence, he did 
not read, and did not like Shakspeare ; the music was 
here too rapid and life-like : but he sympathized pro- 
foundly with the solemn cathedial chanting of Milton. 
An appeal to his sympathies which exacted quick 
changes in those sympathies he could not meet, but a 
more stationary key of solemnity he could. Indeed, 
this difference is illustrated daily. A long list can be 
cited of passages in Shakspeare, which have been 
solemnly denounced by many eminent men (all block- 
heads) as ridiculous : and if a man does find a passage 
in a tragedy that displeases him, it is sure to seem 
ludicrous : witness the indecent exposures of them- 
selves made by Voltaire, La Harpe, and many billions 
beside of bilious people. Whereas, of all the shameful 
people (equally billions and not less bilious) that have 
presumed to quarrel with Milton, not one has thought 
him ludicrous, but only dull and somnolent. In ' Lear ' 
and in ' Hamlet,' as in a human face agitated by 
passion, are many things that tremble on the brink 
of the ludicrous to an observer endowed with small 
range of sympathy or intellect. But no man ever 
found the starry heavens ludicrous, though many find 
them dull, and prefer a near view of a brandy flask. 
So in the solemn wheelings of the Miltonic movement, 
Addison could find a sincere delight. But the sub- 
limities of earthly misery and of human frenzy were 
for him a book sealed. Beside all which, Milton re- 
newed the types of Grecian beauty as to form, whilst 
Shakspeare, without designing at all to contradict these 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 103 

types, did so, in effect, by his fidelity to a new nature, 
radiating from a Gothic centre. 

In the midst, however, of much just feeling, which 
one could only wish a little deeper, in the Addisonian 
papers on ' Paradise Lost,' there are some gross blun- 
ders of criticism, as there are in Dr. Johnson, and 
from the self-same cause — an understanding suddenly 
palsied from defective passion, A feeble capacity of 
passion must, upon a question of passion, constitute a 
feeble range of intellect. But, after all, the worst 
thing uttered by Addison in these papers is, not 
against Milton, but meant to be complimentary. To- 
wards enhancing the splendor of the great poem, he 
tells us that it is a Grecian palace as to amplitude, 
symmetry, and architectural skill : but being in the 
English language, it is to be regarded as if built in 
brick ; whereas, had it been so happy as to be written 
in Greek, then it would have been a palace built in 
Parian marble. Indeed ! that's smart — ' that's hand- 
some, I calculate.' Yet, before a man undertakes to 
sell his mother-tongue, as old pewter trucked against 
gold, he should be quite sure of his own metallurgic 
skill ; because else, the gold may happen to be copper, 
and the pewter to be silver. Are you quite sure, my 
Addison, that you have understood the powers of this 
language which you toss away so lightly, as an old 
tea-kettle ? Is it a ruled case that you have exhausted 
its resources ? Nobody doubts your grace in a certain 
line of composition, but it is only one line among 
many, and it is far from being amongst the highest. 
It is dangerous, without examination, to sell even old 
kettles ; misers conceal old stockings filled with 
guineas in old tea-kettles ; and we all know thai 



104 schlosser's literaey history 

Aladdin's servant, by exchanging an old lamp for a 
new one, caused an Iliad of calamities : his master's 
palace jumped from Bagdad to some place on the road 
to Ashantee ; Mrs. Aladdin and the piccaninies were 
carried off as inside passengers ; and Aladdin himself 
only escaped being lagged, for a rogue and a conjuror, 
by a flying jump after his palace. Now, mark the 
folly of man. Most of the people I am going to men- 
tion subscribed, generally, to the supreme excellence 
of Milton ; but each wished for a little change to be 
made — which, and which only was wanted to per- 
fection. Dr. Johnson, though he pretended to be 
satisfied with the ' Paradise Lost,' even in what he re- 
garded as the undress of blank verse, still secretly 
wished it in rhyme. That's No. 1. Addison, though 
quite content with it in English, still could have wished 
it in Greek. That's No. 2. Bentley, though admiring 
the blind old poet in the highest degree, still observed, 
smilingly, that after all he 2Das blind ; he, therefore, 
slashing Dick, could have wished that the great man 
had always been surrounded by honest people ; but, 
as that was not to be, he could have wished that his 
amanuensis has been hanged ; but, as that also had 
become impossible, he could wish to do execution upon 
him in effigy, by sinking, burning, and destroying his 
handywork — upon which basis of posthumous justice, 
he proceeded to amputate all the finest passages in the 
poem. Slashing Dick was No. 3. Payne Knight was 
a severer man even than slashing Dick ; he professed 
to look upon the first book of ' Paradise Lost ' as the 
finest thing that earth had to show ; but, for that very 
reason, he could have wished, by your leave, to see 
the other eleven books sawed off, and sent overboard ; 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 105 

oecause, though tolerable perhaps in another situation, 
they really were a national disgrace, when standing be- 
hind that unrivalled portico of book 1. There goes 
No. 4. Then came a fellow, whose name was either 
not on his title page, or I have forgotten it, that pro- 
nounced the poem to be laudable, and full of good 
materials ; but still he could have wished that the ma- 
terials had been put together in a more workmanlike 
manner ; which kind office he set about himself. He 
made a general clearance of all lumber : the ex- 
pression of every thought he entirely re-cast : and he 
fitted up the metre whh beautiful patent rhymes ; not, 
I believe, out of any consideration for Dr. Johnson's 
comfort, but on principles of mere abstract decency : 
as it was, the poem seemed naked, and yet was not 
ashamed. There went No. 5. Him succeeded a 
droller fellow than any of the rest. A French book- 
seller had caused a prose French translation to be 
made of the ' Paradise Lost,' without particularly no- 
ticing its English origin, or at least not in the title 
page. Our friend. No. 6, getting hold of this as an 
original French romance, translated it back into En- 
glish prose, as a satisfactory novel for the season. His 
litile mistake was at length discovered, and communi- 
cated to liim with shouts of laughter ; on which, after 
considerable kicking and plunging (for a man cannot 
but turn restive when he finds that he has not only got 
the wrong sow by the ear, but actually sold the sow to a 
bookseller), the poor translator was tamed into sulki- 
ness ; in which state he observed that he could have 
wished his own work, being evidently so much supe- 
rior to the earliest form of the romance, might bo 
admitted by the courtesy of England to take the pre« 



106 schlosser's literary history 

cedency as the original ' Paradise Lost,' and to super- 
sede the very rude performance of ' Milton, Mr. 
John.' 7 

Schlosser makes the astounding assertion, that a com- 
pliment of Boileau to Addison, and a pure compliment 
of ceremony upon Addison's early Latin verses, was 
(credite posteri !) the making of Addison in England. 
Understand, Schlosser, that Addison's Latin verses 
were never heard of by England, until long after his 
English prose had fixed the public attention upon him ; 
his Latin reputation was a slight reaction from his 
English reputation : and, secondly, understand that 
Boileau had at no time any such authority in England 
as to make anybody's reputation ; he had first of all to 
make his own, A sure proof of this is, that Boileau's 
name was first published to London, by Prior's bur- 
lesque of what the Frenchman had called an ode. 
This gasconading ode celebrated the passage of the 
Rhine in 1672, and the capture of that famous fortress 
called Skink (' le fameux fort de'), by Louis XIV., 
known to London at the time of Prior's parody by the 
name of ' Louis Baboon.' ^ That was not likely to 
recommend Master Boileau to any of the allies against 
the said Baboon, had it ever been heard of out of France. 
Nor was it likely to make him popular in England, 
that his name was first mentioned amongst shouts of 
laughter and mockery. It is another argument of the 
Slight notoriety possessed by Boileau in England — 
that no attempt was ever made to translate even his 
satires, epistles, or ' Lutrin,' except by booksellers' 
hacks ; and that no such version ever took the slightest 
root amongst ourselves, from Addison's day to this 
very summer of 1847. Boileau was essentially, and 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 107 

in two senses, viz., both as to mind and as to influence, 
un homme borne. 

Addison's ' Blenheim ' is poor enough ; one might 
think it a translation from some German original of 
those times. Gottsched's aunt, or Bodmer's wet-nurse, 
might have written it ; but still no fibs even as to 
' Blenheim.' His ' enemies ' did not say this thing 
against 'Blenheim' 'aloud,' nor his friends that thing 
against it ' softly.' And why ? Because at that time 
( 1704-5) he had made no particular enemies, nor any 
particular friends ; unless by friends you mean his 
Whig patrons, and by enemies his tailor and co. 

As to ' Cato,' Schlosser, as usual, wanders in the 
shadow of ancient night. The English ' people,' it 
seems, so ' extravagantly applauded ' this wretched 
drama, that you might suppose them to have ' alto- 
gether changed their nature,' and to have forgotten 
Shakspeare. That man must have forgotten Shak- 
speare, indeed, and from ramollissement of the brain, 
who could admire ' Cato.' ' But,' says Schlosser, ' it 
was only a ' fashion ; ' and the English soon re- 
pented.' The English could not repent of a crime 
which they had never committed. Cato was not popu- 
lar for a moment, nor tolerated for a moment, upon 
any literary ground, or as a work of art. It was an 
apple of temptation and strife thrown by the goddess 
of faction between two infuriated parties. ' Cato,' 
coming from a man without Parliamentary connections, 
would have dropped lifeless to the ground. The Whigs 
have always affected a special love and favoi for 
popular counsels : they have never ceased to give 
themselves the best of characters as regards public 
freedom. The Tories, as contradistinguished to the 



108 schlosser's literary history 

Jacobites, knowing that without their aid, the Revo- 
lution could not have been carried, most justly con- 
tended that the national liberties had been at least as 
much indebted to themselves. When, therefore, the 
Whigs put forth their man Cato to mouth speeches 
about liberty, as exclusively their pet, and about 
patriotism and all that sort of thing, saying insultingly 
to the Tories, ' How do you like that 7 Does that 
sting ? ' ' Sting, indeed ! ' replied the Tories ; ' not at 
all; it's quite refreshing to us, that the Whigs have 
not utterly disowned such sentiments, which, by their 
public acts, we really thought they had.'' And, ac- 
cordingly, as the popular anecdote tells us, a Tory 
leader. Lord Bolingbroke, sent for Booth who per- 
formed Cato, and presented him (populo spectante) 
with fifty guineas ' for defending so well the cause of 
the people against a perpetual dictator.' In which 
words, observe. Lord Bolingbroke at once asserted the 
cause of his own party, and launched a sarcasm against 
a great individual opponent, viz., Marlborough. Now, 
Mr. Schlosser, I have mended your harness : all right 
ahead ; so drive on once more. 

But, oh Castor and Pollux, whither — in what di- 
rection is it, that the man is driving us } Positively, 
Schlosser, you must stop and let me get c ut. I '11 go 
no further with such a drunken coachman. Many 
another absurd thing I was going to have noticed, such 
as his utter perversion of what Mandeville said about 
Addison (viz., by suppressing one word, and misap- 
prehending all the rest). Such, again, as his point- 
blank misstatement of Addison's infirmity in his 
ofiicial character, which was not that ' he could not 
prepare despatches in a good style,' but diametrically 



OF THE EIGHTEENrn CENTURY. 109 

the opposite case — that he insisted too much on style, 
to the serious retardation of public business. But all 
these things are as nothing to what Schlosser says 
elsewhere. He actually describes Addison, on the 
whole, as a ' dull prosaist,' and the patron of pedantry ! 
Addison, the man of all that ever lived most hostile 
even to what was good in pedantry, to its tendencies 
towards the profound in erudition and the non-popular ; 
Addison, the champion of all that is easy, natural, 
superficial, a pedant and a master of pedantry ! Get 
down, Schlosser, this moment ; or let me get out. 

Pope, by far the most important writer, English or 
Continental, of his own age, is treated with more ex- 
tensive ignorance by Mr. Schlosser than any other, and 
(excepting Addison) with more ambitious injustice. A 
false abstract is given, or a false impression, of any 
one amongst his brilliant works, that is noticed at all ; 
and a false sneer, a sneer irrelevant to the case, at any 
work dismissed by name as unworthy of notice. The 
three works, selected as the gems of Pope's collection, 
are the ' Essay on Criticism,' the ' Rape of the Lock,' 
and the ' Essay on Man.' On the first, which (with 
Dr. Johnson's leave) is the feeblest and least interesting 
of Pope's writings, being substantially a mere versifi- 
cation, like a metrical multiplication-table, of common- 
places the most mouldy with which criticism has baited 
its rat-traps ; since nothing is said worth answering, it 
is sufficient to answer nothing. The ' Rape of the 
Lock' is treated with the same delicate sensibility that 
we might have looked for in Brennus, if consulted on 
the picturesque, or in Attila the Hun, if adjured to de- 
cide aesthetically, between two rival cameos. Attila ia 



110 SCHLOSSER's • LITEKAKY HISTORY 

said (though no doubt falsely) to have described him- 
self as not properly a man so much as the Divine wrath 
incarnate. This would be fine in a melodrama, with 
Bengal lights burning on the stage. But, if ever he 
said such a naughty thing, he forgot to tell us what it 
was that had made him angry ; by what title did he 
come into alliance with the Divine wrath, which was 
not likely to consult a savage .'' And why did his 
wrath hurry, by forced marches, to the Adriatic ? Now 
so much do people differ in opinion, that, to us, who 
look at him through a telescope from an eminence, 
fourteen centuries distant, he takes the shape rather of 
a Mahratta trooper, painfully gathering chout, or a 
cateran levying black-mail, or a decent tax-gatherer 
with an inkhorn at his button-hole, and supported by a 
select party of constabulary friends. The very natural 
instinct which Attila always showed for following the 
trail of the wealthiest footsteps, seems to argue a most 
commercial coolness in the dispensation of his wrath. 
Mr. Schlosser burns with the wrath of Attila against all 
aristocracies, and especially that of England. He 
governs his fury, also, with an Atilla discretion in many 
cases ; but not here. Imagine this Hun coming down, 
sword in hand, upon Pope and his Rosicrucian light 
troops, levying chout upon Sir Plume, and fluttering the 
dove-cot of the Sylphs. Pope's ' duty it was,' says this 
demoniac, to ' scourge the follies of good society,' and 
also ' to break with the aristocracy.' No, surely ? 
something short of a total rupture would have satisfied 
the claims of duty ? Possibly ; but it would not have 
satisfied Schlosser. And Pope's guilt consists in having 
made his poem an idol or succession of pictures repre- 
senting the gayer aspects of society as it really was, 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Ill 

and supported by a comic interest of the mock-heroic 
derived from a playful machinery, instead of convert- 
ing it into a bloody satire. Pope, however, did not 
shrink from such assaults on the aristocracy, if these 
made any part of his duties. Such assaults he made 
'.wice at least too often for his own peace, and perhaps 
for his credit at this day. It is useless, however, to 
talk of the poem as a work of art, with one who sees 
none of its exquisite graces, and can imagine his 
countryman Zacharia equal to a competition with Pope. 
But this it may be right to add, that the ' Rape of the 
Lock ' was not borrowed from the ' Lutrin ' of Boileau. 
That was impossible. Neither was it suggested by the 
' Lutrin.' The story in Herodotus of the wars between 
cranes and pigmies, or the Batrachomyomachia (so 
absurdly ascribed to Homer) might have suggested the 
idea more naturally. Both these, there is proof that 
Pope had read : there is none that he had read the 
' Lutrin,' nor did he read French with ease to himself. 
The ' Lutrin,' meantime, is as much below the ' Rape 
of the Lock ' in brilliancy of treatment, as it is dissimilar 
in plan or the quality of its pictures. 

The ' Essay on Man ' is a more thorny subject. 
When a man finds himself attacked and defended from 
all quarters, and on all varieties of principle, he is be- 
wildered. Friends are as dangerous as enemies. He 
must not defy a bristling enemy, if he cares for repose ; 
he must not disown a zealous defender, though making 
concessions on his own behalf not agreeable to him- 
self; he must not explain away ugly phrases in one 
direction, or perhaps ho is recanting the very words 
of his ' guide, philosopher, and friend,' who cannot 
safely be taxed with having first led him into tempta- 



112 schlosser's literary history 

tion ; he must not explain them away in another direc- 
tion, or he runs full tilt into the wrath of motner 
Church — who will soon bring him to his senses by 
penance. Long lents, and no lampreys allowed, would 
soon cauterize the proud flesh of heretical ethics. Pope 
did wisely, situated as he was, in a decorous nation, 
and closely connected, upon principles of fidelity under 
political suffering, with the Roman Catholics, to say 
little in his own defence. That defence, and any re- 
versionary cudgelling which it might entail upon the 
Quixote undertaker, he left — meekly but also slyly, 
humbly but cunningly — to those whom he professed 
to regard as greater philosophers than himself. All 
parties found their account in the affair. Pope slept in 
peace ; several pugnacious gentlemen up and down 
Europe expectorated much fiery wrath in dusting each 
other's jackets ; and Warburton, the attorney, finally 
earned his bishoprick in the service of whitewashing a 
writer, who was aghast at finding himself first trampled 
on as a deist, and then exalted as a defender of the 
faith. Meantime, Mr. Schlosser mistakes Pope's cour- 
tesy, when he supposes his acknowledgments to Lord 
Bolingbroke sincere in their whole extent. 

Of Pope's ' Homer ' Schlosser think fit to say, amongst 
other evil things, which it really does deserve (though 
hardly in comparison with the German ' Homer' of the 
ear-splitting Voss), 'that Pope pocketed the subscription 
of the " Odyssey," and left the work to be done by his 
understrappers.' Don't tell fibs, Schlosser. Never do 
that any more. True it is, and disgraceful enough, 
that Pope (like modern contractors for a railway 
or a loan) let off to sub-contractors several portions of 
the undertaking. He was perhaps not illiberal in the 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 113 

terms of his contracts. At least I know of people 
no\v-a-days (much better artists) that would execute 
such contracts, and enter into any penalties for keeping 
time at thirty per cent. less. But navies and bill- 
brokers, that are in excess now, then were scarce. 
Still the affair, though not mercenary, was illiberal in 
a higher sense of art; and no anecdote shows more 
pointedly Pope's sense of the mechanic fashion, in 
which his own previous share of the Homeric labor 
had been executed. It was disgraceful enough, and 
needs no exaggeration. Let it, therefore, be reported 
truly : Pope personally translated one-half of the 
' Odyssey ' — a dozen books he turned out of his own 
oven : and, if you add the Batrachomyomachia, his 
dozen was a baker's dozen. The journeyman did the 
other twelve ; were regularly paid ; regularly turned 
off when the job was out of hand ; and never once had 
to ' strike for wages.' How much beer was allowed, 
I cannot say. This is the truth of the matter. So no 
more fibbing, Schlosser, if you please. 

But there remains behind all these labors of Pope, 
the ' Dunciad,' which is by far his greatest. I shall not, 
within the narrow bounds assigned to me, enter upon a 
theme so exacting ; for, in this instance, I should have 
to fight not against Schlosser only, but against Dr. 
Johnson, who has thoroughly misrepresented the nature 
of the ' Dunciad,' and, consequently, could not measure 
its merits. Neither he, nor Schlosser, in fact, ever read 
more than a few passages of this admirable poem. But 
the villany is too great for a brief exposure. One thing 
only 1 will notice of Schlosser's misrepresentations. He 
asserts (not when directly speaking of Pope, but after- 
wards, under the head of Voltaire) that the French 
10 



114 schlosser's literary history 

author's trivial and random Temple de Gout ' shows the 
superiority in this species of poetry to have been greatly 
on the side of the Frenchman.' Let's hear a reason, 
though but a Schlosser reason, for this opinion : know, 
then, all men whom it concerns, that ' the Englishman's 
satire only hit such people as would never have been 
known without his mention of them, whilst Voltaire 
selected those who were still called great, and their re- 
spective schools.' Pope's men, it seems, never had 
been famous — Voltaire's might cease to be so, but as 
yet they had not ceased ; as yet they commanded in- 
terest. Now mark how I will put three bullets into 
that plank, riddle it so that the leak shall not be stopped 
by all the old hats in Heidelberg, and Schlosser will 
have to swim for his life. First, he is forgetting that, 
by his own previous confession, Voltaire, not less than 
Pope, had ' immortalized a great many insignificant 
persons ;' consequently, had it been any fault to do so, 
each alike was caught in that fault ; and insignificant 
as the people might be, if they could be ' immortalized,' 
then we have Schlosser himself confessing to the pos- 
sibility that poetic splendor should create a secondary 
interest where originally there had been none. Sec 
ondly, the question of merit does not arise from the 
object of the archer, but from the style of his archery. 
Not the choice of victims, but the execution done is 
what counts. Even for continued failures it would 
plead advantageously, much more for continued and 
brilliant successes, that Pope fired at an object offering 
no sufficient breadth of mark. Thirdly, it is the 
grossest of blunders to say that Pope's objects of satire 
were obscure by comparison with Voltaire's. True, 
the Frenchman's example of a scholar, viz., the French 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTTIRY. 115 

Salmasius, was most accomplished. But so was the 
Englishman's scholar, viz., the English Bentley. Each 
was absolutely without a rival in his own day. But the 
day of Bentley was the very day of Pope. Pope's man 
had not even faded ; whereas the day of Salmasius, 
as respected Voltaire had gone by for more than half a 
century. As to Dacier, '^ which Dacier, Bezonian.?' 
The husband was a passable scholar — but madame 
was a poor sneaking fellow, fit only for the usher of a 
boarding-school. All this, however, argues Schlosser's 
two-fold ignorance — first, of English authors ; second, 
of the ' Dunciad ;' — else he would have known that 
even Dennis, mad John Dennis, was a much cleverer 
man than most of those alluded to by Voltaire. Gibber, 
though slightly a coxcomb, was born a brilliant man. 
Aaron Hill was so lustrous, that even Pope's venom 
fell off spontaneously, like rain from the plumage of a 
pheasant, leaving him to ' mount far upwards with the 
swans of Thanes ' — and, finally, let it not be forgot- 
ten, that Samuel Clarke Burnet, of the Charterhouse, 
and Sir Isaac Newton, did not wholly escape tasting 
the knout ; if that rather impeaches the equity, and 
sometimes the judgment of Pope, at least it contributes 
to show the groundlessness of Schlosser's objection — 
that the population of the Dunciad, the characters that 
filled its stage, were inconsiderable. 

FOX AND BURKE. 

It is, or it would be, if Mr. Schlosser were himself 
more interesting, luxurious to pursue his ignorance as 
to facts, and the craziness of his judgment as to the 
valuation of minds, throughout his comparison of Burke 
with Fox. The force of antithesis brings out into a 



116 schlosser's literary history 

feeble life of meaning, what, in its own insulation, havi 
been languishing mortally into nonsense. The dark- i 
ness of his ' Burke ' becomes visible darkness under the 
glimmering that steals upon it from the desperate com- 
monplaces of this ' Fox.' Fox is painted exactly as 
he would have been painted fifty years ago by any pet 
subaltern of the Whig club, enjoying free pasture in 
Devonshire House. The practised reader knows well 
what is coming. Fox is ' formed after the model of the 
ancients ' — Fox is ' simple ' — Fox is ' natural ' — Fox 
is 'chaste' — Fox is 'forcible;' why yes, in a sense, 
Fox is even ' forcible : ' but then, to feel that he was 
so, you must have heard him ; whereas, for forty years 
he has been silent. We of 1847, that can only read 
him, hearing Fox described as forcible, are disposed to 
recollect Shakspeare's Mr. Feeble amongst Falstaff's 
recruits, who also is described as forcible, viz., as the 
' most forcible Feeble.' And, perhaps, a better de- 
scription could not be devised for Fox himself — so 
feeble was he in matter, so forcible in manner ; so power- 
ful for instant effect, so impotent for posterity. In the 
Pythian fury of his gestures — in his screaming voice — 
in his directness of purpose. Fox would now remind 
you of some demon steam-engine on a railroad, some 
Fire-king or Salmoneus, that had counterfeited, because 
he could not steal, Jove's thunderbolts ; hissing, tub- 
blini,, snorting, fuming ; demoniac gas, you think — 
gas from Acheron must feed that dreadful system of 
convulsions. But pump out the imaginary gas, and 
behold ! it is ditch-water. Fox, as Mr. Schlosser rightly 
thinks, wap all of a piece — simple in his manners, 
simple m his style, simple in his thoughts. No waters 
in him turbid with new crystalizations ; everywhere the 



i 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTXTHY. 117 

eye can see to the bottom. No music in him dark with 
Cassandra meanings. Fox, indeed, disturb decent gen- 
tlemen by ' allusions to all the sciences, from the in- 
tegral calculus and metaphysics to navigation ! ' Fox 
would have seen you hanged first. Burke, on the other 
hand, did all that, and other wickedness besides, which 
fills an 8vo page in Schlosser ; and Schlosser crowns 
his enormities by charging him, the said Burke (p. 99), 
with ' wearisome tediousness.'' Among my own ac- 
quaintances are several old women, who think on this 
point precisely as Schlosser thinks ; and they go further, 
for they even charge Burke with ' tedious wearisome- 
ness.' Oh, sorrowful woe, and also woeful sorrow, 
when an Edmund Burke arises, like a cheeta or hunting 
leopard coupled in a tiger-chase with a German poodle. 
To think, in a merciful spirit, of the jungle — barely to 
contemplate, in a temper of humanity, the incompre- 
hensible cane-thickets, dark and bristly, into which that 
bloody cheeta will drag that unoffending poodle ! 

But surely the least philosophic of readers, who hates 
philosophy ' as toad or asp, ' must yet be aware, that, 
where new growths are not germinating, it is no sort 
of praise to be free from the throes of growth. Where 
expansion is hopeless, it is little glory to have escaped 
distortion. Nor is it any blame that the rich fermenta- 
tion of grapes should disturb the transparency of their 
golden fluids. Fox had nothing new to tell us, nor did 
he hold a position amongst men that required or would 
even have allowed him to tell anything new. He was 
helmsman to a party ; what he had to do, though 
seeming to give orders, was simply to repeat their 
orders — ' Port your helm,' said the party ; ' Port it is,' 
replied the helmsman. But Burke was no steersman; 



118 schlosser's literary history 

he was the Orpheus that sailed with the Argonauts ; he 
was their seer, seeing more in his visions than he 
always understood himself; he was their watcher 
through the hours of night ; he was their astrological 
interpreter. Who complains of a prophet for being a 
little darker of speech than a post-office directory ? or 
of him that reads the stars for being sometimes per- 
plexed ? 

But, even as to facts, Schlosser is always blunder- 
ing. Post-office directories would be of no use to him ; 
nor link-boys ; nor blazing tar-barrels. He wanders 
in a fog such as sits upon the banks of Cocytus. He 
fancies that Burke, in his lifetime, was popular. Of 
course, it is so natural to be popular by means of ' wea- 
risome tediousness,'' that Schlosser, above all people, 
should credit such a tale. Burke has been dead just 
fifty years, come next autumn. I remember the time 
from this accident — that my own nearest relative 
stepped on a day of October, 1797, into that same 
suite of rooms at Bath (North Parade) from which, six 
hours before, the great man had been carried out to 
die at Beaconsfield. It is, therefore, you see, fifty 
years. Now, ever since then, his collective works 
have been growing in bulk by the incorporation of 
juvenile es»ays (such as his ' European Settlements,' 
his 'Essay on the Sublime,' on 'Lord Bolingbroke,' 
&c.), or (as more recently) by the posthumous publica- 
tion of his MSS. ;9 and yet, ever since then, in spite 
of growing age and growing bulk, are more in demand. 
At this time, half a century after his last sigh, Burke 
is popular ; a thing, let me tell you, Schlosser, which 
never happened before to a writer steeped to his lips 
in personal politics. What a tilth of intellectual lava 



OF THB EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 119 

must that man have interfused amongst the refuse and 
scoria of such mouldering party rubbish, to force up a 
new verdure and laughing harvests, annually increas- 
ing for new generations ! Popular he is now, but 
popular he was not in his own generation. And how 
could Schlosser have the face to say that he was ? Did 
he never hear the notorious anecdote, that at one 
period Burke obtained the sobriquet of ' dinner-bell ? ' 
And why ? Not as one who invited men to a banquet 
by his gorgeous eloquence, but as one that gave a sig- 
nal to shoals in the House of Commons, for seeking 
refuge in a literal dinner from the oppression of his 
philosophy. This was, perhaps, in part a scoff of his 
opponents. Yet there must have been some founda- 
tion for the scoff, since, at an earlier stage of Burke's 
career, Goldsmith had independently said, that this 
great orator 

' went on refining, 



And thonght of conyincing, whilst they thought of dining.' 

I blame neither party. It ought not to be expected of 
any popular body that it should be patient of abstrac- 
tions amongst the intensities of party-strife, and the 
immediate necessities of voting. No deliberative body 
would less have tolerated such philosophic exorbita- 
tions from public business than the agora of Athens, 
or tiie Roman senate. So far the error was in Burke, 
not in the House of Commons. Yet, also, on the 
other side, it must be remembered, that an mtellect 
of Burke's combining power and enormous compass, 
could not, from necessity of nature, abstain from such 
speculations. For a man to reach a remote posterity, 
it is sometimes necessary that he should throw his 



120 schlosser's liteeary history 

voice over to them in a vast arch — it must sweep 
a parabola — which, therefore, rises high above the 
heads of those next to him, and is heard by the by- 
standers but indistinctly, like bees swarming in tne 
upper air before they settle on the spot fit for hiving. 

See, therefore, the immeasurableness of miscon- 
ception. Of all public men, that stand confessedly in 
the first rank as to splendor of intellect, Burke was the 
least popular at the time when our blind friend 
Schlosser assumes him to have run off with the lion's 
share of popularity. Fox, on the other hand, as the 
leader of opposition, was at that time a household term 
of love or reproach, from one end of the island to the 
other. To the very children playing in the streets, 
Pitt and Fox, throughout Burke's generation, were 
pretty nearly as broad distinctions, and as much a 
war-cry, as English and French, Roman and Punic. 
Now, however, all this is altered. As regards the 
relations between the two Whigs whom Schlosser so 
steadfastly delighteth to misrepresent, 

* Now is the winter of our discontent 
Made glorious summer ' 

for that intellectual potentate, Edmund Burke, the man 
whose true mode of power has never yet been truly 
investigated ; whilst Charles Fox is known only as an 
echo is known, and for any real effect of intellect upon 
this generation, for anything but the 'whistling of a 
name,' the Fox of 1780-1807 sleeps where the 
carols of the larks are sleeping, that gladdened the 
spring-tides of those years — sleeps with the roses that 
glorified the beauty of their summers.^*^ 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 121 



JUNIUS. 

Schlosscr talks of Junius, who is to him, as to many- 
people, more than entirely the enigma of an enigma, 
Hermes Trismegistus, or the mediaeval Prester John. 
Not only arc most people unable to solve the enigma, 
but they have no idea of what it is that they are to 
solve. I have to inform Schlosser that there are three 
separate questions about Junius, of which he has evi 
dently no distinct knowledge, and cannot, therefore, 
have many chances to spare for settling them. The 
three questions are these : — A. Who was Junius } B. 
What was it that armed Junius with a power so unac- 
countable at this day over the public mind ? C. Why, 
having actually exercised this power, and gained under 
his masque far more than he ever hoped to gain, did 
this Junius not come forward in his own person, when 
all the legal danger had long passed away, to claim a 
distinction that for him (among the vainest of men) 
must have been more precious than his heart's blood ? 
The two questions, B and C, I have examined in past 
times, and I will not here repeat my explanations fur- 
ther than to say, with respect to the last, that the reason 
for the author not claiming his own property was this, 
because he dared not ; because it would have been 
infamy for him to avow himself as Junius ; because it 
would have revealed a crime and published a crime in 
his own earlier life, for which many a man is trans- 
ported in our days, and for less than which many a 
man has been in past days hanged, broken on the 
wheel, burned, gibbeted, or impaled. To say that he 
watched and listened at his master's key-holes, is 
nothing. It was not key-holes only that he made free 
11 



122 schlossek's literaky history 

with, but keys ; he tampered with his master's seals « 
he committed larcenies ; not, like a brave man, risk- 
ing his life on the highway, but petty larcenies — lar- 
cenies in a dwelling-house — larcenies under the op- 
portunities of a confidential situation — crimes which 
formerly, in the days of Junius, our bloody code never 
pardoned in villains of low degree. Junius was in the 
situation of Lord Byron's Lara, or, because Lara is a 
plagiarism, of Harriet Lee's Kraitzrer. But this man, 
because he had money, friends, and talents, instead of 
going to prison, took himself off for a jaunt to the 
continent. From the continent, in full security and in 
possession of the otium cum dignitate., he negotiated 
with the government, whom he had alarmed by pub- 
lishing the secrets which he had stolen. He suc- 
ceeded. He sold himself to great advantage. Bought 
and sold he was ; and of course it is understood that, 
if you buy a knave, and expressly in consideration of 
his knaveries, you secretly undertake not to hang him. 
' Honor bright ! ' Lord Barrington might certainly 
have indicted Junius at the Old Bailey, and had a rea- 
son for wishing to do so ; but George IIL, who was a 
party to the negotiation, and all his ministers, would 
have said, with fits of laughter — ' Oh, come now, my 
lord, you must not do that. For, since we have bar- 
gained for a price to send him out as a member of 
council to Bengal, you see clearly that we could not 
possibly hang him before we had fulfilled our bargain. 
Then it is true we might hang him after he comes 
back. But, since the man (being a clever man) has a 
fair chance in the interim of rising to be Governor- 
General, we put it to your candor, Lord Barrington, 
whether it would be for the public service to hang his 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 123 

excellency ? ' In fact, he might probably have been 
Governor-General, had his bad temper not over- 
mastered him. Had he not quarrelled so viciously 
with Mr. Hastings, it is ten to one that he might, by 
playing his cards well, have succeeded him. As it 
was, after enjoying an enormous salary, he returned to 
England — not Governor-General, certainly, but still 
in no fear of being hanged. Instead of hanging him, 
on second thoughts. Government gave him a red rib- 
bon. He represented a borough in Parliament. He 
was an authority upon Indian affairs. He was caressed 
by the Whig party. He sat at good men's tables. He 
gave for toasts — Joseph Surface sentiments at dinner 
parties — ' The man that betrays ' [something or 
other] — ' the man that sneaks into ' [other men's 
portfolios, perhaps] — ' is ' — ay, what is he ? Why 
he is, perhaps, a Knight of the Bath, has a sumptuous 
mansion in St. James's Square, dies full of years and 
honor, has a pompous funeral, and fears only some 
such epitaph as this — 'Here lies, in a red ribbon, the 
man who built a great prosperity on the basis of a 
great knavery.' I complain heavily of Mr. Taylor, the 
very able unmasker of Junius, for blinking the whole 
questions B and C. He it is that has settled the ques- 
tion A, so that it will never be re-opened by a man 
of sense. A man who doubts, after really reading Mr. 
Taylor's work, is not only a blockhead, but an irre- 
claimable blockhead. It is true that several men, 
among them Lord Brougham, whom Schlosser (though 
hating him, and kicking him) cites, still profess scepti- 
cism. But the reason is evident : they have not read 
the book, they have only heard of it. They are unac- 
quainted with the strongest arguments, and even with 



124 schlossbr's litekaey history 



the nature of the evidence.^! Lord Brougham, indeed, 
is generally reputed to have reviewed Mr. Taylor's 
book. That may be : it is probable enough : what I 
am denying is not at all that Lord Brougham reviewed 
Mr. Taylor, but that Lord Brougham read Mr. Taylor. 
And there is not much wonder in that, when we see 
professed writers on the subject — bulky writers — 
writers of Answers and Refutations, dispensing with 
the whole of Mr. Taylor's book, single paragraphs of 
which would have forced them to cancel their own. 
The possibility of scepticism, after really reading Mr. 
Taylor's book, would be the strongest exemplification 
upon record of Sancho's proverbial reproach, that a 
man ' wanted better bread than was made of wheat — ' 
would be the old case renewed from the scholastic 
grumblers ' that some men do not know when they are 
answered.' They have got their quietus, and they still 
continue to ' maunder ' on with objections long since 
disposed of. In fact, it is not too strong a thing to 
say — and Chief Justice Dallas did say something like 
it — that if Mr. Taylor is not right, if Sir Philip Fran- 
cis is not Junius, then was no man ever yet hanged on 
sufficient evidence. Even confession is no absolute 
proof. Even confessing to a crime, the man may be 
mad. Well, but at least seeing is believing : if the 
court sees a man commit an assault, will not that 
suffice .? Not at all : ocular delusions on the largest 
scale are common. What's a court .'' Lawyers have 
no better eyes than other people. Their physics are 
often out of repair, and whole cities have been known 
to see things that could have no existence. Now, all 
other evidence is held to be short of this blank seeing 
or blank confessing. But I am not at all sure of that. 



1 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 125 

Circumstantial evidence, that multiplies indefinitely its 
points of internexus with known admitted facts, is 
more impressive than direct testimony. If you detect 
a fellow with a large sheet of lead that by many (to 
wit seventy) salient angles, that by tedious (to wit 
thirty) reentrant angles, fits into and owns its sisterly 
relationship to all that is left of the lead upon your 
roof — this tight fit will weigh more with a jury than 
even if my lord chief justice should jump into the wit- 
ness-box, swearing that, with judicial eyes, he saw the 
vagabond cutting the lead whilst he himself sat at 
breakfast ; or even than if the vagabond should protest 
before this honorable court that he did cut the lead, in 
order that he (the said vagabond) might have hot rolls 
and coffee as well as my lord, the witness. If Mr. 
Taylor's body of evidence does not hold water, then is 
there no evidence extant upon any question, judicial or 
not judicial, that will. 

But I blame Mr. Taylor heavily for throwing away 
the whole argument applicable to B and C ; not as 
any debt that rested particularly upon him to public 
justice ; but as a debt to the integrity of his own book. 
That book is now a fragment ; admirable as regards 
A ; but (by omitting B and C) not sweeping the 
whole area of the problem. There yet remains, 
therefore, the dissatisfaction which is always likely to 
arise — not from the smallest allegatio falsi, but from 
the large suppressio veri. B, which, on any other 
solution than the one I have proposed, is perfectly un- 
intelligible, now becomes plain enough. To imagine 
a heavy, coarse, hard-working government, seriously 
affected by such a bauble as thei/ would consider per- 
formances on the tight rope of style, is mere midsum- 



126 SCHLOSSEE''S LITERARY HISTORY 

mer madness. ' Hold your absurd tongue,' would any 
of the ministers have said to a friend descanting on 
Junius as a powerful artist of style — ' do you dream, 
dotard, that this baby's rattle is the thing that keeps 
us from sleeping ? Our eyes are fixed on something 
else : that fellow, whoever he is, knows what he ought 
not to know ; he has had his hand in some of our 
pockets : he 's a good locksmith, is that Junius ; and 
before he reaches Tyburn, who knows what amount 
of mischief he may do to self and partners ? ' The 
rumor that ministers were themselves alarmed (which 
was the naked truth) travelled downwards; but the 
why did not travel ; and the innumerable blockheads 
of lower circles, not understanding the real cause of 
fear, sought a false one in the supposed thunderbolts 
of the rhetoric. Opera-house thunderbolts they were : 
and strange it is, that grave men should fancy news- 
papers, teeming (as they have always done) with 
Publicolas, with Catos, with Algernon Sidneys^ able 
by such trivial small shot to gain a moment's attention 
from the potentates of Downing Street. Those who 
have despatches to write, councils to attend, and votes 
of the Commons to manage, think little of Junius 
irutus. A Junius Brutus, that dares not sign by his 
<'wn honest name, is presumably skulking from his 
creditors. A Timoleon, who hints at assassination in 
a newspaper, one may take it for granted, is a manu- 
facturer of begging letters. And it is a conceivable 
case that a twenty pound note, enclosed to Timoleon's 
address, through the newspaper office, might go far to 
soothe that great patriot's feelings, and even to turn 
aside his avenging dagger. These sort of people were 
not the sort to frighten a British Ministry. One laughs 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 127 

at the probable conversation between an old hunting 
squire coming up to comfort the First Lord of the 
Treasury, on the rumor that he was panic-struck. 
' What, surely, my dear old friend, you 're not afraid 
of Timoleon ? ' First Lord. — ' Yes, I am.* C. 
Grent. — ' What, afraid of an anonymous fellow in 
the papers ? ' F. L. — ' Yes, dreadfully.' C. Gent. — 
' Why, I always understood that these people were a 
sort of shams — living in Grub Street — or where was 
it that Pope used to tell us they lived ? Surely you 're 
not afraid of Timoleon, because some people think 
he 's a patriot ? ' F. L. — ' No, not at all ; but I am 
afraid because some people think he 's a housebreaker ! ' 
In that character only could Timoleon become for- 
midable to a Cabinet Minister ; and in some such charac- 
ter must our friend, Junius Brutus, have made himself 
alarming to Government. From the moment that B 
is properly explained, it throws light upon C. The 
Government was alarmed — not at such moonshine as 
patriotism, or at a soap-bubble of rhetoric — but be- 
cause treachery was lurking amongst their own house- 
holds : and, if the thing went on, the consequences 
might be appalling. But this domestic treachery, 
which accounts for B, accounts at the same time for 
C. The very same treachery that frightened its 
objects at the time by the consequences it might 
breed, would frighten its author afterwards from 
claiming its literary honors by the remembrances it 
might awaken. The mysterious disclosures of official 
secrets, which had once roused so much consternation 
within a limited circle, and (like the French affair of 
the diamond necklace) had sunk into neglect only 
when all clue seemed lost for perfectly unravelling it, 



128 schlosser's literary history 

would revive in all its interest when a discovery came 
before the public, viz., a claim on the part of Francis 
to have written the famous letters, which must at the 
same time point a strong light upon the true origin of 
the treacherous disclosures. Some astonishment had 
always existed as to Francis — how he rose so sud- 
denly into rank and station : some astonishment always 
existed as to Junius, how he should so suddenly have 
fallen asleep as a writer in the journals. The coinci- 
dence of this sudden and unaccountable silence with 
the sudden and unaccountable Indian appointment of 
Francis ; the extraordinary familiarity of Junius, which 
had not altogether escaped notice^ with the secrets 
of one particular office, viz., the War Office ; the sud- 
den recollection, sure to flash upon all who remem- 
bered Francis, if again he should become revived into 
suspicion, that he had held a situation of trust in that 
particular War Office ; all these little recollections 
would begin to take up their places in a connected 
story : this and that, laid together, would become clear 
as day-light ; and to the keen eyes of still surviving 
enemies — Home Tooke, ' little Chamier,' Ellis, the 
Fitzroy, Russell, and Murray houses — the whole pro- 
gress and catastrophe of the scoundrelism, the perfidy 
and the profits of the perfidy, would soon become as 
intelligible as any tale of midnight burglary from 
without, in concert with a wicked butler within, that 
was ever sifted by judge and jury at the Old 
Bailey, or critically reviewed by Mr. John Ketch at 
Tyburn. 

Francis was the man. Francis was the wicked 
butler within, whom Pharaoh ought to have hanged, 
but whom he clothed in royal apparel, and mounted 



OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 129 

upon a horse that carried him to a curule chair of 
honor. So far his burglary prospered. But, as gene- 
rally happens in such cases, this prosperous crime 
subsequently avenged itself. By a just retribution, the 
success of Junius, in two senses so monstrously exag- 
gerated — exaggerated by a romantic over-estimate of 
its intellectual power through an error of the public, 
not admitted to the secret — and equally exaggerated 
as to its political power by the government in the 
hush-money for its future suppression, became the 
heaviest curse of the successful criminal. This crim- 
inal thirsted for literary distinction above all other dis- 
tinction, with a childish eagerness, as for the amreeta 
cup of immortality. And, behold ! there the brilliant 
bauble lay, glittering in the sands of a solitude, un- 
claimed by any man; disputed with him (if he chose 
to claim it) by nobody ; and yet for his life he durst 
not touch it. He stood — he knew that he stood — in 
the situation of a murderer who has dropt an inestima- 
ble jewel upon the murdered body in the death-strug- 
gle with his victim. The jewel is his ! Nobody will 
deny it. He may have it for asking. But to ask is 
his death-warrant. 'Oh yes!' would be the answer, 
' here 's your jewel, wrapt up safely in tissue paper. 
But here's another lot that goes along with it — no 
bidilcr can take them apart — viz. a halter, also wrapt 
up in tissue paper.' Francis, in relation to Junius, 
was in that exact predicament. ' You are Junius ? 
You are that famous man who has been missing since 
1772 ? And you can prove it ? God bless me ! sir ; 
what a long time you 've been sleeping : every body's 
gone to bed. Well, then, you are an exceedingly 
clever fellow, that have had the luck to be thought ten 



130 schlosser's literary history, etc. 

times more clever than really you were. And also, 
you are the greatest scoundrel that at this hour rests 
in Europe unhanged!' — Francis died, and made no 
sign. Peace of mind he had parted with for a pea- 
cock's feather, which feather, living or dying, he durst 
not mount in the plumage of his cap. 



NOTES. 



Note 1. Page 8G. 

Even Pope, with all his natural and reasonable interest in 
wistocratic society, could not shut his eyes to the fact that a jest 
in his mouth became twice a jest in a lord's. But still he failed 
to perceive what I am here contending for, that if the jest hap- 
pened to miss fire, through the misfortune of bursting its barrel, 
the consequences would be far worse for the lord than the com- 
moner. There is, you see, a blind sort of compensation. 

Note 2. Page 88. 

Mr. Schlosser, who speaks English, who has read rather too 
much English for any good that he has turned it to, and who 
ought to have a keen eye for the English version of his own book, 
after so much reading and study of it, has, however, overlooked 
several manifest errors. I do not mean to tax Mr. Davison with 
general inaccuracy. On the contrary, he seems wary, and in 
most cases successful as a dealer with the peculiarities of the 
German. But several cases of error I detect without needing the 
original : they tell their own story. And one of these I here 
notice, not only for its own importance, but out of love to 
Schlosser, and by way of nailing his guarantee to the counter — 
not altogether as a bad shilling, but as a light one. At p. 5 of 
vol. 2, in a foot-note, which is speaking of Kant, we read of his 
attempt to introduce the notion of negative greatness into Phi- 
losophy. JVegative greatness ! What strange bird may that be ? 
Is it the ornithorynchits paradoxus ? Mr. Schlosser was not 
wide awake there. The reference is evidently to Kant's essay 
upon the advantages of introducing into philosophy the algebraio 

[131] 



132 NOTES. 

idea of negative quantities. It is one of Kant's grandest gleams 
into hidden truth. Were it only for the merits of this most 
masterly essay in reconstituting the algebraic meaning of a 
negative quantity [so generally misunderstood as a negation 
of quantity, and which even Sir Isaac Newton misconstrued as 
regarded its metaphysics], great would have been the service 
rendered to logic by Kant. But there is a greater. From this 
little brochure I am satisfied was derived originally the German 
regeneration of the Dynamic philosophy, its expansion through 
the idea of polarity, indifierence, &tj. Oh, Mr. Schlosser, you 
had not gepruft p. 5 of vol. 2. You skipped the notes. 

Note 3. Page 90. 

* Little nurse : ' — the word Glumdalclitch, in Brobding- 
nagian, absolutely means little nurse, and nothing else. It may 
seem odd that the captain should call any nurse of Brobdingnag, 
however kind to him, by such an epithet as little; and the 
reader may fancy that Sherwood forest had put it into his head, 
where Robin Hood always called his right hand man ' Little 
John,' not although, but expressly because John stood seven feet 
high in his stockings. But the truth is — that Glumdalclitch 
was little; and literally so; she was only nine years old, and 
(says the captain) ' little of her age,' being barely forty feet 
high. She had time to grow certainly, but as she had so much 
to do before she could overtake other women, it is probable that 
Ae would turn out what, in Westmoreland, they call a little 
stiffenger — very little, if at all, higher than a common English 
church steeple. 

Note 4. Page 96. 

'Activity.' — It is some sign of this, as well as of the more 
thoroughly English taste in literature which distinguished Steele, 
that hardly twice throughout the ' Spectator ' is Shakspeare 
quoted or alluded to by Addison. Even these quotations he had 
from the theatre, or the breath of popular talk. Generally, if 
you see a line from Shakspeare, it is safe to bet largely that the 
paper is Steele's; sometimes, indeed, of casual contributors ; but, 
almost to a certainty, not a paper of Addison's. Another mark 
of Steele's superiority in vigor of intellect is, that much oftener 



NOTES. 133 

in Am than in other contributors strong thoughts came fonvard; 
harsh and disproportioned, perhaps, to the case, and never har- 
moniously developed with the genial grace of Addison, but origi- 
nal, and pregnant with promise and suggestion. 

Note 5. Page 98. 

• Letters of Joseph Mede,' published more than twenty years 
ago by Sir Henry Ellis. 

Note 6. Page 101. 

It is an idea of many people, and erroneously sanctioned by 
Wordsworth, that Lord Somers gave a powerful lift to the • Par- 
adise Lost.' He was a subscriber to the sixth edition, the first 
that had plates ; but this was some years before the Revolution 
of 1688, and when he was simply Mr. Somers, a bai'rister, with 
no effectual power of patronage. 

Note 7. Page 106. 

♦ Milton, Mr. John : ' — Dr. Johnson expressed his wrath, in 
an amusing way, at some bookseller's hack who, when employed 
to make an index, introduced Milton's name among the M'a, un- 
der the civil title of — ' Milton, Mr. John.* 

Note 8. Page 106. 

* Louis Baboon:^ — As people read nothing in these days 
that is more than forty-eight hours old, I am daUy admonished 
that allusions the most obvious to anything in the rear of our own 
time, needs explanation. Louis Baboon is Swift's jesting name 
for Louis Bourbon, i. e., Louis XIV. 

Note 9. Page 118. 

* Of his MSS. : ' — And, if all that I have heard be true, much 
has somebody to answer for, that so little has been yet published. 
The two executors of Burke were Dr. Lawrence, of Doctors' Com- 
mons, a well-known M. P. in forgotten days, and "Windham, a 
man too like Burke in elasticity of mind ever to be spoken of in 
connection with forgotten things. Which of them was to blame, 
I know not. But Mr. R. Sharpe, M. P. twenty-five years ago, 



134 NOTES. 

well known as River Sharpe, from the ctTrt^arroXoYia of Ms con- 
versation, used to say, that one or both of the executors had 
offered him, (the river) a huge travelling trunk, perhaps an Im- 
perial or a Salisbury boot (equal to the wardrobe of a family), 
filled with Burke's MSS., on the simple condition of editing them 
with proper annotations. An Oxford man, and also the celebrated 
Mr. Christian Curwen, then member for Cumberland, made, in 
my hearing, the same report. The Oxford man, in particular, 
being questioned as to the probable amount of MS., deposed, that 
he could not speak upon oath to the cubical contents ; but this 
he could say, that, having stripped up his coat sleeve, he had 
endeavored, by such poor machinery as nature had allowed him, 
to take the soundings of the trunk, but apparently there were 
none ; with his middle finger he could find no bottom ; for it was 
stopped by a dense stratum of MS. ; below which, you know, 
other strata might lie ad infinitum. For anything proved to the 
contrary, the trunk might be bottomless. 

Note 10. Page 120. 

A man in Fox's situation is sure, whUst living, to draw after 
him trains of sycophants ; and it is the evil necessity of news- 
papers the most independent, that they must swell the mob of 
sycophants. The public compels them to exaggerate the true 
proportions of such people as we see every hour in our own day. 
Those who, for the moment, modify, or may modify the national 
condition, become preposterous idols in the eyes of the gaping 
public ; but with the sad necessity of being too utterly trodden 
under foot after they are shelved, unless they live in men's 
memory by something better than speeches in Parliament. Hav 
ing the usual fate, Fox was complimented, whilst living, on his 
knowledge of Homeric Greek, which was a jest : he knew neither 
more nor less of Homer, than, fortunately, most English gentle- 
men of his rank ; quite enough that is to read the ♦ Iliad ' with 
■unaffected pleasure, far too little to revise the text of any three 
lines, without making himself ridiculous. The excessive slender- 
ness of his general literature, English and French, may be seen 
ia the letters published by his Secretary, Trotter. But his frag- 
ment of a History, published by Lord Holland, at two guineas, 
and currently sold for two shillings (not two pence, or else I 



NOTES. 135 

have been defrauded of Is. 10cf.),mostof all proclaims the tenuity 
of his knowledge. He looks upon Malcolm Laing as a huge 
oracle ; and, having read even less than Hume, a thing not very 
easy, with great naivete, cannot guess where Hume picked up 
his facts. 

Note 11. Page 124. 

Even in Dr. Francis's Translation of Select Speeches from 
Demosthenes, which Lord Brougham naturally used a little in 
his own labors on that theme, there may be traced several pecu- 
liarities of diction that startle us in Junius. Sir P. had them from 
his father. And Lord Brougham ought not to have overlooked 
them. The same thing may be seen in the notes to Dr. Francis's 
translation of Horace. These points, though not independently 
of much importance, become far more so in combination with 
others. The reply made to me once by a publisher of some emi- 
nence upon this question, was the best fitted to lower Mr. Taylor's 
investigation with a stranger to the long history of the dispute. 
• I feel,' he said, * the impregnability of the case made out by Mr. 
Taylor. But the misfortune is, that I have seen so many pre- 
vious impregnable cases made out for other claimants.' Ay, that 
would be unfortunate. But the misfortune for this repartee was, 
that I, for whose use it was intended, not being in the predica- 
ment of a stranger to the dispute, having seen every page of the 
pleadings, knew all (except Mr. Taylor's) to be false in their 
statements ; after which their arguments signified nothing. 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES, 

AS REPRESENTED ON THE EDINBURGH STAGK 

EvEEY thing in our days is new. Roads^ for in- 
stance, which, being formerly ' of the earth earthy,* 
and therefore perishable, are now iron, and next door 
to being immortal ; tragedies, which are so entirely 
new, that neither we nor our fathers, through eighteen 
hundred and ninety odd years, gone by, since Coesar 
did our little island the honor to sit upon its skirts, 
have ever seen the like to this ' Antigone ; ' and, finally, 
even more new are readers, who, being once an obe- 
dient race of men, most humble and deferential in the 
presence of a Greek scholar, are now become intrac- 
tably mutinous ; keep their hats on whilst he is ad- 
dressing them ; and listen to him or not, as he seems 
to talk sense or nonsense. Some there are, however, 
who look upon all these new things as being intensely 
old. Yet, surely the railroads are new ? No ; not at 
all. Talus, the iron man in Spenser, who continually 
ran round the island of Crete, administering gentle 
warning and correction to offenders, by flooring them 
with an iron flail, was a very ancient personage in 
Greek fable ; and the received opinion is, that he must 
have been a Cretan railroad, called The Great Circular 
Coast-Line, that carried my lords the judges on their 
circuits of jail-delivery. The ' Antigone,' again, that 
12 [137] 



138 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

wears the freshness of morning dew, and is so fresh 
and dewy in the beautiful person of Miss Faucit, had 
really begun to look faded on the Athenian stage, and 
even ' of a certain age,' about the death of Pericles, 
whose meridian year was the year 444 before Christ. 
Lastly, these modern readers^ that are so obstinately 
rebellious to the once Papal authority of Greek, they — 
No ; on consideration, they are new. Antiquity pro- 
duced many monsters, but none like them. 

The truth is, that this vast multiplication of readers, 
within the last twenty-five years, has changed the 
prevailing character of readers. The minority has 
become the overwhelming majority : the quantity has 
disturbed the quality. Formerly, out of every five 
readers, at least four were, in some degree, classical 
scholars : or, if that would be saying too much, if two 
of the four had ' small Latin and less Greek,' they 
were generally connected with those who had more, or 
at the worst, who had much reverence for Latin, and 
more reverence for Greek. If they did not all share 
in the services of the temple, all, at least, shared in 
the superstition. But, now-a-days, the readers come 
chiefly from a class of busy people who care very 
little for ancestral crazes. Latin they have heard of, 
and some of them know it as a good sort of industrious 
language, that even, in modern times, has turned out 
many useful books, astronomical, medical, philosophi- 
cal, and (as Mrs. Malaprop observes) diabolical ; but, 
as to Greek, they think of it as of an ancient mummy : 
you spend an infinity of time in unswathing it from its 
old dusty wrappers, and, when you have come to the 
end, what do you find for your pains } A woman's 
face, or a baby's, that certainly is not the better for 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 139 

being three thousand years old ; and perhaps a few 
ears of wheat, stolen from Pharaoh's granary ; which 
wheat, when sown • in Norfolk or Mid-Lothian, reaped, 
thrashed, ground, baked, and hunted through all sorts 
of tortures, yields a breakfast roll that (as a Scottish 
baker observed to me) is ' not just that bad.' Cer- 
tainly not : not exactly ' that bad ; ' not worse than the 
worst of our own ; but still, much fitter for Pharaoh's 
breakfast-table than for ours. 

I, for my own part, stand upon an isthmus, con- 
necting me, at one terminus, with the rebels against 
Greek, and, at the other, with those against whom they 
are in rebellion. On the one hand, it seems shocking 
to me, who am steeped to the lips in antique prejudices, 
that Greek, in unlimited quantities, should not secure a 
limited privilege of talking nonsense. Is all reverence 
extinct for old, and ivy-mantled, and worm-eaten 
things ? Surely, if your own grandmother lectures on 
morals, which perhaps now and then she does, she will 
command that reverence from you, by means of her 
grandmotherhood, which by means of her ethics she 
might not. To be a good Grecian, is now to be a 
faded potentate ; a sort of phantom Mogul, sitting at 
Delhi, with an English sepoy bestriding his shoulders. 
Matched against the master of ologies, in our days, 
the most accomplished of Grecians is becoming what 
the ' master of sentences ' had become long since, in 
competition with the political economist. Yet, be 
assured, reader, that all the ' ologies ' hitherto chris- 
tened oology, ichthyology, ornithology, conchology, 
palaeodontology, &c., do not furnish such mines of 
labor as does the Greek language when thoroughly 
searched. The ' Miihridates ' of Adelung, improved 



140 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

by the commentaries of Vater and of subsequent au- 
thors, numbers up about four thousand languages and 
jargons on our polyglot earth ; not including the 
chuckling of poultry, nor caterwauling, nor barking, 
howling, braying, lowing, nor other respectable and 
ancient dialects, that perhaps have their elegant and 
their vulgar varieties, as well as prouder forms of com- 
munication. But my impression is, that the Greek, 
taken by itself, this one exquisite language, considered 
as a quarry of intellectual labor, has more work in it, 
is more truly a piece de resistance, than all the re- 
maining three thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, 
with caterwauling thrown into the bargain. So far I 
side with the Grecian, and think that he ought to be 
honored with a little genuflexion. Yet, on the other 
hand, the finest sound on this earth, and which rises 
like an orchestra above all the uproars of earth, and 
the Babels of earthly languages, is truth absolute 
truth ; and the hatefulest is conscious falsehood. Now, 
there is falsehood, nay (which seems strange), even 
sycophancy, in the old undistinguishing homage to all 
that is called classical. Yet why should men be syco- 
phants in cases where they must be disinterested ? 
Sycophancy grows out of fear, or out of mercenary 
self-interest. But what can there exist of either point- 
ing to an old Greek poet ? Cannot a man give his 
free opinion upon Homer, without fearing to be way- 
laid by his ghost ? But it is not that which startles 
him from publishing the secret demur which his heart 
prompts, upon hearing false praises of a Greek poet, 
or praises which, if not false, are extravagant. What 
he fears, is the scorn of his contemporaries. Let 
once a party have formed itself considerable enough to 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 141 

protect a man from the charge of presumption in 
throwing off the yoke of servile allegiance to all that 
is called classical, — let it be a party ever so smah 
numerically, and the rebels will soon be many. What 
a man fears is, to affront the whole storm of indigna- 
tion, real and affected, in his own solitary jterson. 
' Goth ! ' ' Vandal ! ' he hears from every side. Break 
that storm by dividing it, and he will face its anger. 
' Let me be a Goth,' he mutters to himself, ' but let me 
not dishonor myself by affecting an enthusiasm which 
my heart rejects ! ' 

Ever since the restoration of letters there has been a 
cabal, an academic interest, a factious league amongst 
universities, and learned bodies, and individual scholars, 
for exalting as something superterrestrial, and quite 
unapproachable by moderns, the monuments of Greek 
literature. France, in the time of Louis XIV., Eng- 
land, in the latter part of that time ; in fact, each 
country as it grew polished at some cost of strength, 
carried this craze to a dangerous excess — dangerous 
as all things false are dangerous, and depressing to 
the aspirations of genius. Boileau, for instance, and 
Addison, though neither ^ of them accomplished in 
scholarship, nor either of them extensively read in any 
department of the classic literature, speak every where 
of the classics as having notoriously, and by the 
general confession of polished nations, carried the 
functions of poetry and eloquence to that sort of fault- 
less beauty which probably does really exist in the 
Greek sculpture. There are few things perfect in 
this world of frailty. Even lightning is sometimes a 
failure : Niagara has horrible faults ; and Mont Blanc 
might be improved by a century of chiselling from 



142 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

judicious artists. Such are the works of blind ele« 
ments, which (poor things!) cannot improve by expe- 
rience. As to man who does, the sculpture of the 
Greeks in their marbles and sometimes in their gems, 
seems the only act of his workmanship which has hit 
the bull's eye in the target at which we are all aiming. 
Not so, with permission from Messrs. Boileau and Ad- 
dison, the Greek literature. The faults in this are 
often conspicuous ; nor are they likely to be hidden 
for the coming century, as they have been for the 
three last. The idolatry will be shaken : as idols, 
some of the classic models are destined to totter : and 
I foresee, without gifts of prophecy, that many laborers 
will soon be in this field — many idoloclasts, who will 
expose the signs of disease, which zealots had inter- 
preted as power ; and of weakness, which is not the 
less real because scholars had fancied it health, nor the 
less injurious to the total effect because it was inevita- 
ble under the accidents of the Grecian position. 

Meantime, I repeat, that to disparage any thing 
whatever, or to turn the eye upon blemishes, is no part 
of my present purpose. Nor could it be : since the 
one sole section of the Gi-eek literature, as to which I 
profess myself an enthusiast, happens to be the tragic 
drama ; and here, only, I myself am liable to be chal- 
lenged as an idolater. As regards the Antigone in 
particular, so profoundly do I feel the impassioned 
beauty of her situation in connection with her charac- 
ter, that long ago, in a work of my own (yet unpub- 
lished), having occasion (by way of overture intro- 
ducing one of the sections) to cite before the reader « 
eye the chief pomps of the Grecian theatre, after 
invoking ' the magnificent witch ' Medea, I call up 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 143 

Antigone to this shadowy stage by the apostrophe, 
' Holy heathen, daughter of God, before God was 
known, 3 flower from Paradise after Paradise was 
closed ; that quitting all things for which flesh lan- 
guishes, safety and honor, a palace and a home, didst 
make thyself a houseless pariah, lest the poor pariah 
king, thy outcast father, should want a hand to lead 
him in his darkness, or a voice to whisper comfort in 
his misery ; angel, that badst depart for ever the 
glories of thy own bridal day, lest he that had shared 
thy nursery in childhood, should want the honors of a 
funeral ; idolatrous, yet Christian Lady, that in the 
spirit of martyrdom trodst alone the yawning billows 
of the grave, flying from earthly hopes, lest everlast- 
ing despair should settle upon the grave of thy brother,' 
&c. In fact, though all the groupings, and what I 
would call permanent attitudes of the Grecian stage, 
are majestic, there is none that, to my mind, towers 
into such affecting grandeur, as this final revelation, 
through Antigone herself, and through her own dread- 
ful death, of the tremendous wo that destiny had sus- 
pended over her house. If therefore my business had 
been chiefly with the individual drama, I should hav© 
found little room for any sentiment but that of pro- 
found admiration. But my present business is differ- 
ent : it concerns the Greek drama generally, and the 
attempt to revive it ; and its object is to elucidate, 
rather than to praise or to blame. To explain this 
better, I will describe two things : — 1st, The sort 
of audience that I suppose myself to be addressing; 
and, 2dly, As growing out of that, the particular 
quality of the explanations which I wish to make. 
1st, As to the audience : in order to excuse the tone 



144 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

(which occasionally I may be obliged to assume) of 
one speaking as from a station of knowledge, to others 
having no knowledge, I beg it to be understood, that I 
take that station deliberately, on no conceit of supe- 
riority to my readers, but as a companion adapting my 
services to the wants of those who need them. I am 
not addressing those already familiar with the Greek 
drama, but those who frankly confess, and (according 
to their conjectural appreciation of it) who regret their 
non-familiarity with that drama. It is a thing well 
known to publishers, through remarkable results, and 
is now showing itself on a scale continually widening, 
that a new literary public has arisen, very different 
from any which existed at the beginning of this cen- 
tury. The aristocracy of the land have always been, 
in a moderate degree, literary ; less, however, in con- 
nection with the current literature, than with literature 
generally — past as well as present. And this is a 
tendency naturally favored and strengthened in them^ 
by the fine collections of books, carried forward through 
successive generations, which are so often found as a 
sort of hereditary foundation in the country mansions 
of our nobility. But a class of readers, prodigiously 
more extensive, has formed itself within the com- 
mercial orders of our great cities and manufacturing 
districts. These orders range through a large scale. 
The highest classes amongst them were always literary. 
But the interest of literature has now swept downwards 
through a vast compass of descents : and this large 
body, though the busiest in the nation, yet, by having 
under their undisturbed command such leisure time as 
they have at all under their command, are eventually 
able to read more than those even who seem to have 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 145 

nothing else but leisure. In justice, however, to the 
nobilit}'- of our land, it should be remembered, that 
their stations in society, and their wealth, their terri- 
torial duties, and their various public duties in London, 
as at court, at public meetings, in parliament, &c., 
bring crowded claims upon their time ; whilst even 
sacrifices of time to the graceful courtesies of life, are in 
reference to their stations, a sort of secondary duties. 
These allowances made, it still remains true that the 
busier classes are the main reading classes; whilst 
from their immense numbers, they are becoming ef- 
fectually the body that will more and more impress 
upon the moving literature its main impulse and di- 
rection. One other feature of difference there is 
amongst this commercial class of readers : amongst 
the aristocracy all are thoroughly educated, excepting 
those who go at an early age into the army ; of the 
commercial body, none receive an elaborate, and what 
is meant by a liberal education, except those standing 
by their connections in the richest classes. Thus it 
happens that, amongst those who have not inherited 
but achieved their stations, many men of fine and 
powerful understandings, accomplished in manners, 
and admirably informed, not having had the bene- 
fits when young of a regular classical education, find 
(upon any accident bringing up such subjects) a de- 
ficiency which they do not find on other subjects. 
They are too honorable to undervalue advantages, 
which they feel to be considerable, simply because 
they were denied to themselves. They regret their 
loss. And yet it seems hardly worth while, on a 
simple prospect of contingencies that may never be 
realized, to undertake an entirely new course of study 
13 



146 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 



I 



for redressing this loss. But they would be glad h 
avail themselves of any useful information not exact- 
ing study. These are the persons, this is the class, to 
which I address my remarks on the ' Antigone ; ' and 
out of their particular situation, suggesting upon all 
elevated subjects a corresponding tone of liberal curi- 
osity, will arise the particular nature and direction of 
these remarks. 

Accordingly, I presume, secondly, that this curiosity 
will take the following course : — these persons will 
naturally wish to know, at starting, what there is 
differentially interesting in a Grecian tragedy, as con- 
trasted with one of Shakspeare's or of Schiller's : in 
what respect, and by what agencies, a Greek tragedy 
affects us, or is meant to affect us, otherwise than as 
they do ; and how far the Antigone of Sophocles was 
judiciously chosen as the particular medium for con- 
veying to British minds a first impression, and a repre- 
sentative impression, of Greek tragedy. So far, in 
relation to the ends proposed, and the means selected. 
Finally, these persons will be curious to know the issue 
of such an experiment. Let the purposes and the 
means have been bad or good, what was the actual 
success ? And not merely success, in the sense of 
the momentary acceptance by half a dozen audiences, 
whom the mere decencies of justice must have com- 
pe-lled to acknowledge the manager's trouble and 
expense on their behalf; but what was the degree of 
satisfaction felt by students of the Athenian ^ tragedy, 
in relation to their long-cherished ideal ? Did the re- 
presentation succeed in realizing, for a moment, the. 
awful pageant of the Athenian stage ? Did Tragedv 
in Milton's immortal expression. 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 147 



come sweeping by 



In sceptred pall i 

Or was the whole, though successful in relation to the 
thing attempted, a failure in relation to what ought 
to have been attempted ? Such are the questions to 
be answered. 

The first elementary idea of a Greek tragedy, is 
to be sought in a serious Italian opera. The Greek 
dialogue is represented by the recitative, and the 
tumultuous lyrical parts assigned chiefly, though not 
exclusively, to the chorus on the Greek stage, are 
represented by the impassioned airs, duos, trios, cho- 
ruses, &c. on the Italian. And here, at the very outset, 
occurs a question which lies at the threshold of a Fine 
Art, — that is, of any Fine Art: for had the views of 
Addison upon the Italian opera had the least foundation 
in truth, there could have been no room or opening 
for any mode of imitation except such as belongs to a 
mechanic art. 

The reason for at all connecting Addison with this 
case is, that he chiefly was the person occupied in 
assailing the Italian opera ; and this hostility arose, 
probably, in his want of sensibility to good (that is, to 
Italian) music. But whatever might be his motive for 
the hostility, the single argument by which he sup- 
ported it was this, — that a hero ought not to sing 
upon the stage, because no hero known to history ever 
summoned a garrison in a song, or charged a battery 
in a semichorus. In this argument lies an ignorance 
of the very first principle concerned in every Fine 
Art. In all alike, more or less directly, the object is 
to reproduce in the mind some great effect, through 



148 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

the agency of idem in alio. The idem, the same im 
pression, is to be restored ; but in alio, in a different 
material, — by means of some different instrument. 
For instance, on the Roman stage there was an art, 
now entirely lost, of narrating, and, in part of dramati- 
cally representing an impassioned tale, by means of 
dancing, of musical accompaniment in the orchestra, 
and of elaborate pantomime in the performer. Saltavit 
Hypermnestram, he danced (that is, he represented by 
dancing and pantomime the story of) Hypermnestra. 
Now, suppose a man to object, that young ladies, 
when saving their youthful husbands at midnight from 
assassination, could not be capable of waltzing or 
quadrilling, how wide is this of the whole problem ! 
This is still seeking for the mechanic imitation, some 
imitation founded in the very fact ; whereas the object 
is to seek the imitation in the sameness of the im- 
pression drawn from a different, or even from an 
impossible fact. If a man, taking a hint from the 
Roman ' Saltatio' {saltavit Andromachen), should say 
that he would ' whistle Waterloo,' that is, by whistling 
connected with pantomime, would express the passion 
and the changes of Waterloo, it would be monstrous to 
refuse him his postulate on the pretence that ' people 
did not whistle at Waterloo.' Precisely so : neither 
are most people made of marble, but of a material as 
different as can well be imagined, viz. of elastic flesh, 
with warm blood coursing along its tubes ; and yet, 
for all that, a sculptor will draw tears from you, by 
exhibiting, in pure statuary marble, on a sepulchral 
monument, two young children with their little heads 
on a pillow, sleeping in each other's arms ; whereas, 
if he had presented them in wax-work, which yet is 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 149 

far riiOrc like to flesh, you would have felt little more 
pathos in the scene than if they had been shown baked 
in gilt gingerbread. He has expressed the idem, the 
identical thing expressed in the real children; the 
Bleep that masks death, the rest, the peace, the 
purity, the innocence; but in alio, in a substance 
the most different; rigid, non-elastic, and as unlike to 
flesh, if tried by touch, or eye, or by experience of 
life, as can well be imagined. So of the whistling. It 
is the very worst objection in the world to say, that 
the strife of Waterloo did not reveal itself through 
whistling : undoubtedly it did not ; but that is the very 
ground of the man's art. He will reproduce the fury 
and the movement as to the only point which concerns 
you, viz. the effect, upon your own sympathies, through 
a language that seems without any relation to it : he 
will set before you what was at Waterloo through that 
which was not at Waterloo. Whereas any direct 
factual imitation, resting upon painted figures drest up 
in regimentals, and worked by watchwork through the 
whole movements of the battle, would have been no 
art whatsoever in the sense of a Fine Art, but a base 
mechanic mimicry. 

This principle of the idem in alio, so widely diff'used 
through all the higher revelations of art, it is peculiarly 
requisite to bear in mind when looking at Grecian 
tragedy, because no form of human composition em- 
ploys it in so much complexity. How confounding it 
would have been to Addison, if somebody had told 
him, that, substantially, he had himself committed the 
offence (as he fancied it) which he charged so bitterly 
upon the Italian opera ; and that, if the opera had gone 
farther upon that road than himself, the Greek tragedy, 



150 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

which he presumed to be so prodigiously exalted be- 
yond modern approaches, had gone farther even than 
the opera. Addison himself, when writing a tragedy, 
made this violation (as he would have said) of nature, 
made this concession (as I should say) to a higher 
nature, that he compelled his characters to talk in 
metre. It is true this metre was the common iambic, 
which (as Aristotle remarks) is the most natural and 
spontaneous of all metres ; and, for a sufficient reason, 
in all languages. Certainly ; but Aristotle never 
meant to say that it was natural for a gentleman in a 
passion to talk threescore and ten iambics consecu- 
tively : a chance line might escape him once and 
away ; as we know that Tacitus opened one of his 
works by a regular dactylic hexameter in full curl, 
without ever discovering it to his dying day (a fact 
which is clear from his never having corrected it) ; 
and this being a very artificial metre, a fortiori Tacitus 
might have slipped into a simple iambic. But that 
was an accident, whilst Addison had deliberately and 
uniformly made his characters talk in verse. Accord- 
ing to the common and false meaning [which was his 
own meaning] of the word nature, he had as undeniably 
violated the principle of the natural, by this metrical 
dialogue, as the Italian opera by musical dialogue. If 
it is hard and trying for men to sing their emotions, 
not less so it must be to deliver them in verse. 

But, if this were shocking, how much more shocking 
would it have seemed to Addison, had he been intro- 
duced to parts which really exist in the Grecian drama ? 
Even Sophocles, who, of the three tragic poets sur- 
viving from the wrecks of the Athenian stage, is 
reputed the supreme artist^^ if not the most impas- 



I 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 151 

sionod poet, with what horror he would have over- 
whelmed Addison, when read by the light of those 
principles which he had himself so scornfully applied 
to the opera ! In the very monsoon of his raving 
misery, from calamities as sudden as they were irre- 
deemable, a king is introduced, not only conversing, 
but conversing in metre ; not only in metre, but in the 
most elaborate of choral metres ; not only under the 
torture of these lyric difficulties, but also chanting ; 
not only chanting, but also in all probability dancing. 
What do you think of that^ Mr. Addison ? 

There is, in fact, a scale of graduated ascents in 
these artifices for unrealizlng the effects of dramatic 
situations : 

1. We may see, even in novels and prose comedies, 
a keen attention paid to the inspiriting and dressing of 
the dialogue : it is meant to be life-like, but still it is a 
little raised, pointed, colored, and idealized. 

2. In comedy of a higher and more poetic cast, we 
find the dialogue metrical. 

3. In comedy or in tragedy alike, which is meant to 
be still further removed from ordinary life, we find the 
dialogue fettered not only by metre, but by rhyme. 
We need not go to Dryden, and others, of our own 
middle stage, or to the French stage for this : even in 
Shakspeare, as for example, in parts of Romeo and 
Juliet (and for no capricious purpose), we may see 
effects sought from the use of rhyme. There is another 
illustration of the idealizing effect to be obtained from 
a particular treatment of the dialogue, seen in the 
Hamlet of Shakspeare. In that drama there arises a 
necessity for exhibiting a play within a play. This 
•Jftterior drama is to be further removed from the 



152 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

spectator than the principal drama ; it is a deep below 
a deep ; and, to produce that effect, the poet relies 
chiefly upon the stiffening the dialogue, and removing 
it still farther, than the general dialogue of the in- 
cluding or outside drama, from the standard of ordi- 
nary life. 

4. We find, superadded to these artifices for ideal- 
izing the situations, even music of an intermitting 
character, sometimes less, sometimes more impas- 
sioned — recitatives, airs, choruses. Here we have 
reached the Italian opera. 

5. And, finally, besides all these resources of art 
we find dancing introduced ; but dancing of a solemn, 
mystical, and symbolic character. Here, at last, we 
have reached the Greek tragedy. Probably the best 
exemplification of a Grecian tragedy that ever will be 
given to a modern reader is found in the Samson 
Agonistes of Milton. Now, in the choral or lyric parts 
of this fine drama, Samson not only talks, 1st, metri- 
cally (as he does every where, and in the most level 
parts of the scenic business), but, 2d, in very intricate 
metres, and, Sd, occasionally in rhymed metres (though 
the rhymes are too sparingly and too capriciously scat- 
tered by Milton), and, 4th, singing or chanting these 
metres (for, as the chorus sang, it was impossible that 
he could be allowed to talk in his ordinary voice, else 
he would have put them out, and ruined the music). 
Finally, 5th, I am satisfied that Milton meant him to 
dance. The office of the chorus was imperfectly de- 
fined upon the Greek stage. They are generally 
understood to be the moralizers of the scene. But this 
is liable to exceptions. Some of them have been 
known to do very bad things on the stage, and to come 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 153 

within a trifle of felony : as to misprision of felony, 
if there is such a crime, a Greek chorus thinks nothing 
of it. But that is no business of mine. What I was 
going to say is, that, as the chorus sometimes inter- 
mingles too much in the action, so the actors some- 
times intermingle in the business of the chorus. Now, 
when you are at Rome, you must do as they do at 
Kome. And that the actor, who mixed with the 
chorus, was compelled to sing, is a clear case ; for his 
part in the choral ode is always in the nature of an 
echo, or answer, or like an antiphony in cathedral ser- 
vices. But nothing could be more absurd than that 
one of these antiphonies should be sung, and another 
said. That he was also compelled to dance, I am 
satisfied. The chorus only sometimes moralized, but it 
always danced : and any actor, mingling with the 
chorus, must dance also. A little incident occurs to 
my remembrance, from the Moscow expedition of 1812, 
which may here be used as an illustration : One day- 
King Murat, flourishing his plumage as usual, made a 
gesture of invitation to some squadrons of cavalry that 
they should charge the enemy : upon which the cavalry 
advanced, but maliciously contrived to envelope the 
king of dandies, before he had time to execute his 
ordinary manoeuvre of riding off to the left and be- 
coming a spectator of their prowess. The cavalry 
resolved that his majesty should for once ride down at 
their head to the melee, and taste what fighting was 
like ; and he, finding that the thing must be, though 
horribly vexed, made a merit of his necessity, and 
afterwards pretended that he liked it very much. 
Sometimes, in the darkness, in default of other mis- 
anthrojuc visions, the wickedness of this cavalry, their 



154 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

mechancete, causes me to laugh immoderately. Now 
I conceive that any interloper into the Greek chorus 
must have danced when they danced, or he would have 
been swept away by their impetus : nolens volens, he 
must have rode along with the orchestral charge, he 
must have rode on the crest of the choral billows, or 
he would have been rode down by their impassioned 
sweep. Samson, and CEdipus, and others, must have 
danced, if they sang ; and they certainly did sing, by 
notoriously intermingling in the choral business.^ 

' But now,' says the plain English reader, ' what was 
the object of all these elaborate devices ? And how 
came it that the English tragedy, which surely is as 
good as the Greek,' (and at this point a devil of de- 
fiance whispers to him, like the quarrelsome servant 
of the Capulets or the Montagus, 'say better,'') 'that 
the English tragedy contented itself with fewer of these 
artful resources than the Athenian ? ' I reply, that 
•the object of all these things was — to unrealize the 
scene. The English drama, by its metrical dress, and 
by other arts more disguised, unrealized itself, liberated 
itself from the oppression of life in its ordinary stand- 
ards, up to a certain height. Why it did not rise still 
higher, and why the Grecian did, T will endeavor to 
explain. It was not that the English tragedy was less 
impassioned ; on the contrary, it was far more so ; the 
Greek being awful rather than impassioned ; but the 
passion of each is in a different key. It is not again 
that the Greek drama sought a lower object than the 
English : it sought a different object. It is not im- 
parity, but disparity, that divides the two magnificent 
theatres. 

Suffer me, reader at this point, to borrow from my 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 155 

self, and do not betray me to the authorities that rule in 
this journal, if you happen to know [which is not 
likely] that I am taking an idea from a paper which 
years ago I wrote for an eminent literary journal. As 
I have no copy of that paper before me, it is impos- 
sible that I should save myself any labor of writing. 
The words at any rate I must invent afresh : and as 
to the idea, you never can be such a churlish man as, 
by insisting on a new one, in effect to insist upon my 
writing a false one. In the following paragraph, there- 
fore, I give the substance of a thought suggested by 
myself some years ago. 

That kind of feeling, which broods over the Grecian 
tragedy, and to court which feeling the tragic poets 
of Greece naturally spread all their canvas, was more 
nearly allied to the atmosphere of death than that of 
life. This expresses rudely the character of awe and 
religious horror investing the Greek theatre. But to 
my own feeling the different principle of passion which 
governs the Grecian conception of tragedy, as com- 
pared with the English, is best conveyed by saying 
that the Grecian is a breathing from the world of 
sculpture, the English a breathing from the world 
of painting. What we read in sculpture is not abso- 
lutely death, but still less is it the fulness of life. We 
read there the abstraction of a life that reposes, the 
sublimity of a life that aspires, the solemnity of a life 
that is thrown to an infinite distance. This last is the 
feature of sculpture which seems most characteristic : 
the form which presides in the most commanding 
groups, ' is not dead but sleepeth : ' true, but it is the 
sleep of a life sequestrated, solemn, liberated from the 
bonds of space and time, and (as to both alike) thrown 



156 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

(I repeat the words) to a distance which is infinite. It 
affects us profoundly, but not by agitation. Now, on 
the other hand, the breathing life — life kindling, 
trembling, palpitating — that life which speaks to us 
in painting, this is also the life that speaks to us in 
English tragedy. Into an English tragedy e^en fes. 
tivals of joy may enter ; marriages, and baptisms, or 
commemorations of national trophies : which, or any 
thing like which, is incompatible with the very being 
of the Greek. In that tragedy what uniformity of 
gloom ; in the English what light alternating with 
depths of darkness ! The Greek, how mournful ; the 
English, how tumultuous ! Even the catastrophes how 
different ! In the Greek we see a breathless waiting 
for a doom that cannot be evaded ; a waiting, as it 
were, for the last shock of an earthquake, or the inex- 
orable rising of a deluge : in the English it is like a 
midnight of shipwreck, from which up to the last and 
till the final ruin comes, there still survives the sort of 
hope that clings to human energies. 

Connected with this original awfulness of the Greek 
tragedy, and possibly in part its cause, or at least 
lending strength to its cause, we may next remark the 
grand dimensions of the ancient theatres. Every 
citizen had a right to accommodation. There at once 
was a pledge of grandeur. Out of this original stand- 
ard grew the magnificence of many a future amphi- 
theatre, circus, hippodrome. Had the original theatre 
been merely a speculation of private interest, then, 
exactly as demand arose, a corresponding supply would 
have provided for it through its ordinary vulgar chan- 
nels ; and this supply would have taken place through 
rival theatres. But the crushing exaction of ' room for 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 157 

every citizen,' put an end to that process of subdivision. 
Drury Lane, as 1 read (or think that I read) thirty 
years ago, allowed sitting room for three thousand 
eight hundred people. Multiply that by ten ; imagine 
thirty-eight thousand instead of thirty-eight hundred, 
and then you have an idea of the Athenian theatre, ' 

Next, out of that grandeur in the architectural pro- 
portions arose, as by necessity, other grandeurs. You 
are aware of the cothurnus, or buskin, which raised 
the actor's heel by two and a half inches ; and you 
think that this must have caused a deformity in the 
general figure as incommensurate to this height. Not 
at all. The flowing dress of Greece healed all that. 

But, besides the cothurnus, you have heard of the 
mask. So far as it was fitted to swell the intona- 
tions of the voice, you are of opinion that this mask 
would be a happy contrivance ; for what, you say, 
could a common human voice avail against the vast 
radiation from the actor's centre of more than three 
myriads.? If, indeed (like the Homeric Stentor), an 
actor spoke in point of loudness, 6aov aXXoi nivriixovra, as 
much as other fifty, then he might become audible to 
the assembled Athenians without aid. But this being 
impossible, art must be invoked ; and well if the 
mask, together with contrivances of another class, 
could correct it. Yet if it could, still you think that 
this mask would bring along with it an overbalancing 
evil. For the expression, the fluctuating expression, 
of the features, the play of the muscles, the music of 
the eye and of the lips, — aids to acting that, in our 
times, have given immortality to scores, whither would 
those have vanished > Reader, it mortifies me that 
all which I said to you upon the peculiar and separata 



158 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

grandeur investing the Greek theatre is forgotten. 
For, you must consider, that where a theatre is built 
for receiving upwards of thirty thousand spectators, the 
curve described by what in modern times you would 
call the tiers of boxes, must be so vast as to make the 
ordinary scale of human features almost ridiculous by 
disproportion. Seat yourself at this day in the amphi- 
theatre at Verona, and judge for yourself. In an 
amphitheatre, the stage, or properly the arena, occupy- 
ing, in fact, the place of our modern pit, was much 
nearer than in a scenic theatre to the surrounding 
spectators. Allow for this, and placing some adult in 
a station expressing the distance of the Athenian stage, 
then judge by his appearance if the delicate pencilling 
of Grecian features could have told at the Grecian dis- 
tance. But even if it could, then I say that this cir- 
cumstantiality would have been hostile to the general 
tendencies (as already indicated) of the Grecian 
drama. The sweeping movement of the Attic tragedy 
ought not to admit of interruption from distinct human 
features ; the expression of an eye, the loveliness of a 
smile, ought to be lost amongst effects so colossal. 
The mask aggrandized the features : even so far it 
acted favorably. Then figure to yourself this mask 
presenting an idealized face of the noblest Grecian 
outline, moulded by some skilful artist Phidiacd manu, 
so as to have the effect of a marble bust ; this accorded 
with the aspiring cothurnus ; and the motionless char- 
acter impressed upon the features, the marble tran- 
quillity, would (I contend) suit the solemn processional 
character of Athenian tragedy, far better than the most 
expressive and flexible countenance on its natural 
scale. ' Yes,' you say, on considering the character 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 159 

of the Greek drama, ' generally it might ; in forty- 
nine cases suppose out of fifty : but what shall be done 
.n the fiftieth, where some dreadful discovery or anag- 
norisis (t. e. recognition of identity) takes place within 
the compass of a single line or two ; as, for instance, 
in th3 CEdipus Tyrannus, at the moment when (Edipus 
by a final question of his own, extorts his first fatal 
discovery, viz. that he had been himself unconsciously 
the murderer of Laius ? ' True, he has no reason as 
yet to suspect that Laius was his own father ; which 
discovery, when made further on, will di'aw with it 
another still more dreadful, viz. that by this parricide 
he had opened his road to a throne, and to a marriage 
with his father's widow, who was also his own natural 
mother. He does not yet know the worst : and to 
have killed an arrogant prince, would not in those days 
have seemed a very deep offence : but then he believes 
that the pestilence had been sent as a secret vengeance 
for this assassination, which is thus invested with a 
mysterious character of horror. Just at this point, 
Jocasta, his mother and his wife, says,^ on witnessing 
the sudden revulsion of feeling in his face, ' I shudder, 
oh king, when looking on thy countenance.' Now, in 
what way could this passing spasm of horror be recon- 
ciled with the unchanging expression in the marble- 
looking mask } This, and similar cases to this, 
must surely be felt to argue a defect in the scenic 
apparatus. But I say, no : first. Because the general 
indistinctiveness from distance is a benefit that applies 
equally to the fugitive changes of the features and to 
their permanent expression. You need not regret the 
loss through absence^ of an appearance that would 
equally, though present, have been lost through dis- 



160 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

tance. Secondly, The Greek actor had alw'ays the 
resource, under such difficulties, of averting his face ; 
a resource sanctioned in similar cases by the greatest 
of the Greek painters. Thirdly, The voluminous 
draperies of the scenic dresses, and generally of the 
Gi'eek costume, made it an easy thing to muffle the 
features altogether by a gesture most natural to sudden 
horror. Fourthly, We must consider that there were 
no stage lights : but, on the contrary that the general 
light of day was specially mitigated for that particular 
part of the theatre ; just as various architectural devices 
were employed to swell the volume of sound. Finally, 
[ repeat my sincere opinion, that the general indis- 
tinctness of the expression was, on principles of taste, 
an advantage, as harmonizing with the stately and 
sullen monotony of the Greek tragedy. Grandeur in 
the attitudes, in the gestures, in the groups, in the pro- 
cessions — all this was indispensable : but, on so vast 
a scale as the mighty cartoons of the Greek stage, an 
Attic artist as little regarded the details of physiognomy, 
as a great architect would regard, on the frontispiece 
of a temple, the miniature enrichments that might be 
suitable in a drawing-room. 

With these views upon the Grecian theatre, and 
other views that it might oppress the reader to dwell 
upon in this place, suddenly in December last an op- 
portunity dawned — a golden opportunity, gleaming 
for a moment amongst thick clouds of impossibility 
that had gathered through three-and-twenty centuries — 
for seeing a Grecian tragedy presented on a British 
stage, and with the nearest approach possible to the 
beauty of those Athenian pomps which Sophocles, 
which Phidias, which Pericles created, beautified, pro 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 161 

inoted. I protest, when seeing the Edinburgh theatre's 
programme^ that a note dated from the Vatican would 
not have startled me more, though sealed with the seal 
of the fisherman, and requesting the favor of my com- 
pany to take coffee with the Pope. Nay, less : for 
channels there were through which I might have com- 
passed a presentation to his Holiness ; but the daughter 
of CEdipus, the holy Antigone, could I have hoped to 
see her ' in the flesh ? ' This tragedy in an English 
version, 9 and with German music, had first been 
placed before the eyes and ears of our countrymen at 
Convent Garden during the winter of 1844-5. It was 
said to have succeeded. And soon after a report 
sprang up, from nobody knew where, that Mr. Murray 
meant to reproduce it in Edinburgh, 

What more natural ? Connected so nearly with the 
noblest house of scenic artists that ever shook the 
hearts of nations, nobler than ever raised undying 
echoes amidst the mighty walls of Athens, of Rome, 
of Paris, of London, — himself a man of talents almost 
unparalleled for versatility, — why should not Mr. 
Murray, always so liberal in an age so ungrateful to 
his profession, have sacrificed something to this occa- 
sion? He, that sacrifices so much, why not sacrifice 
to the grandeur of the Antique ? I was then in Edin- 
burgh, or in its neighborhood ; and one morning, at a 
casual assembly of some literary friends, present Pro- 
fessor Wilson, Messrs. J. F., C. N., L. C, and others, 
advocates, scholars, lovers of classical literature, wd 
proposed two resolutions, of which the first was, that 
the news was too good to be true. That passed nem. 
con. ; and the second resolution was nearly passing, 
viz. that a judgment would certainly fall upon Mr. 
14 



162 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

Murray, had a second report proved true, viz. that not 
the Antigone, but a burlesque on the Antigone, was 
what he meditated to introduce. This turned out 
false ; i° the original report was suddenly revived eight 
or ten months after. Immediately on the heels of the 
promise the execution followed ; and on the last (which 
I believe was the seventh) representation of the An- 
tigone, I prepared myself to attend. 

It had been generally reported as characteristic of 
myself, that in respect to all coaches, steamboats, rail- 
roads, wedding-parties, baptisms, and so forth, there 
was a fatal necessity of my being a trifle too late. 
Some malicious fairy, not invited to my own baptism, 
was supposed to have endowed me with this infirmity. 
It occurred to me that for once in my life I would show 
the scandalousness of such a belief by being a trifle 
too soon, say, three minutes. And no name more 
lovely for inaugurating such a change, no memory 
with which I could more willingly connect any re- 
formation, than thine, dear, noble Antigone ! Accord- 
ingly, because a certain man (whose name is down in 
my pocket-book for no good) had told me that the 
doors of the theatre opened at half-past six, whereas, 
in fact, they opened at seven, there was I, if you 
please, freezing in the little colonnade of the theatre 
precisely as it wanted six-and-a-half minutes to seven, — 
six-and-a-half minutes observe too soon. Upon which 
this son of absurdity coolly remarked, that, if he had 
not set me half-an-hour forward, by my own showing, 
I should have been twenty-three-and-a-half minutes too 
late. What sophistry ! But thus it happened (namely, 
through the wickedness of this man), that, upon enter- 
ing the theatre, I found myself like Alexander Selkirk, 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 163 

m a frightful solitude, or like a single family of Arabs 
gathering at sunset about a solitary coffee-pot in the 
boundless desert. Was there an echo raised ? it was 
from my own steps. Did any body cough ? it was 
too evidently myself. 1 was the audience ; I was the 
public. And, if any accident happened to the theatre, 
such as being burned down, Mr. Murray would cer- 
tainly lay the blame upon me. My business meantime, 
as a critic, was — to find out the most malicious seat, 
t. e. the seat from which all things would take the most 
unfavorable aspect. I could not suit myself in this 
respect ; however bad a situation might seem, I still 
fancied some other as promising to be worse. And I 
was not sorry when an audience, by mustering in 
strength through all parts of the house, began to divide 
my responsibility as to burning down the building, and, 
at the same time, to limit the caprices of my distracted 
choice. At last, and precisely at half-past seven, the 
curtain drew up ; a thing not strictly correct on a 
Grecian stage. But in theati*es, as in other places, 
one must forget and forgive. Then the music began, 
of which in a moment. The overture slipped out at 
one ear, as it entered the other, which, with submission 
to Mr. Mendelssohn, is a proof that it must be horribly 
bad ; for, if ever there lived a man that in music can 
neither forget nor forgive, that man is myself. What- 
ever is very good never perishes from my remem- 
brance, — that is, sounds in my ears by intervals for 
ever, — and for whatever is bad, I consign the author, 
in my wrath, to his own consience, and to the tortures 
of his own discords. The most villanous things, how- 
ever, have one merit ; they are transitory as the best 
things ; and that was true of the overture : it perished 



164 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

Then, suddenly, — oh, heavens ! what a revelation of 
beauty ! — forth stepped, walking in brightness, the 
most faultless of Grecian marbles. Miss Helen Faucit 
as Antigone. What perfection of Athenian sculpture ! 
the noble figure, the lovely arms, the fluent drapeiy ! 
What an unveiling of the ideal statuesque ! Is it Hebe ? 
is it Aurora ? is it a goddess that moves before us ? 
Perfect she is in form ; perfect in attitude ; 

' Beautiful exceedingly. 
Like a ladie from a far countrie.' 

Here was the redeeming jewel of the performance. It 
flattered one's patriotic feelings, to see this noble young 
countrywoman realizing so exquisitely, and restoring 
to our imaginations, the noblest of Grecian girls. We 
critics, dispersed through the house, in the very teeth 
of duty and conscience, all at one moment unanimously 
fell in love with Miss Faucit. We felt in our remorse, 
and did not pretend to deny, that our duty was — to be 
savage. But when was the voice of duty listened to 
in the first uproars of passion ? One thing I regretted, 
viz. that from the indistinctness of my sight for distant 
faces, I could not accurately discriminate Miss Faucit's 
features ; but I was told by my next neighbor that they 
were as true to the antique as her figure. Miss Faucit's 
voice is fine and impassioned, being deep for a female 
voice : but in this organ lay also the only blemish of 
her personation. In her last scene, which is injudi- 
ciously managed by the Greek poet, — too long by 
much, and perhaps misconceived in the modern way 
of understanding it, — her voice grew too husky to 
execute the cadences of the intonations : yet, even in 
this scene, her fall to the ground, under the burden of 



1 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 165 

her farewell anguish, was in a high degree sculptur- 
esque through the whole succession of its stages. 

Antigone in the written drama, and still more in the 
personated drama, draws all thoughts so entirely to 
herself, as to leave little leisure for examining the 
other parts ; and, under such circumstances, the first 
impulse of a critic's mind is, that he ought to massacre 
all the rest indiscriminately ; it being clearly his duty 
to presume every thing bad which he is not unwillingly 
forced to confess good, or concerning which he retains 
no distinct recollection. But I, after the first glory of 
Antigone's avatar had subsided, applied myself to con- 
sider the general ' setting ' of this Theban jewel. 
Creon, whom the Greek tragic poets take delight in 
describing as a villain, has very little more to do (until 
his own turn comes for grieving), than to tell Antigone, 
by minute-guns, that die she must. ' Well, uncle, 
don't say that so often,' is the answer which, secretly, 
the audience whispers to Antigone. Our uncle grows 
tedious ; and one wishes at last that he himself could 
be ' put up the spout.' Mr. Glover, from the sepulchral 
depth of his voice, gave effect to the odious Creontic 
menaces ; and, in the final lamentations over the dead 
body of Hgemon, being a man of considerable intel- 
lectual power, Mr. Glover drew the part into a promi 
nence which it is the fault of Sophocles to have 
authorized in that situation ; for the closing sympathies 
of the spectator ought not to be diverted, for a moment, 
from Antigone. 

But the chorus, how did they play their part ? Mainly 
their part must have always depended on the character 
of the music : even at Athens, that must have been 
very much the case, and at Edinburgh altogether, be- 



166 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

cause dancing on the Edinburgh stage there was none. 
How came that about ? For the very word, ' orchestral,' 
suggests to a Greek ear dancings as the leading ele- 
ment in the choral functions. Was it because dancing 
with us is never used mystically and symbolically, 
never used in our religious services? Still it would 
have been possible to invent solemn and intricate 
dances, that might have appeared abundantly signifi- 
cant, if expounded by impassioned music. But that 
music of Mendelssohn ! — like it I cannot. Say not 
that Mendelssohn is a great composer. He is so. But 
here he was voluntarily abandoning the resources of 
his own genius, and the support of his divine art, in 
quest of a chimera : that is, in quest of a thing called 
Greek music, which for us seems far more irrecover- 
able than the ' Greek fire.' I myself, from an early 
date, was a student of this subject. I read book after 
book upon it ; and each successive book sank me 
lower into darkness, until I had so vastly improved in 
ignorance, that I could myself have written a quarto 
upon it, which all the world should not have found it 
possible to understand. It should have taken three 
men to construe one sentence. I confess, however, to 
not having yet seen the writings upon this impractica- 
ble theme of Colonel Perronet Thompson. To write 
experimental music for choruses that are to support the 
else meagre outline of a Greek tragedy, will not do. 
Let experiments be tried upon worthless subjects ; and 
if this of Mendelssohn's be Greek music, the sooner it 
takes itself off" the better. Sophocles will be delivered 
from an incubus, and we from an affliction of the audi- 
tory nerves. 

It strikes me that 1 see the source of this music. 



THB ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 167 

We, that were learning German some thirty years ago, 
must remember the noise made at that time about 
Mendelssohn, the Platonic philosopher. And why ? 
Was there any thing particular in ' Der Phsedon,' on 
the immortality of the soul ? Not at all ; it left us 
quite as mortal as it found us ; and it has long since 
been found mortal itself. Its venerable remains are 
still to be met with in many worm-eaten trunks, pasted 
on the lids of which 1 have myself perused a matter 
of thirty pages, except for a part that had been too 
closely perused by worms. But the key to all the 
popularity of the Platonic Mendelssohn, is to be sought 
in the whimsical nature of German liberality, which, 
in those days, forced Jews into paying toll at the gates 
of cities, under the title of ' swine,' but caressed their 
infidel philosophers. Now, in this category of Jew 
and infidel, stood the author of ' Phaedon.' He was 
certainly liable to toll as a hog ; but, on the other 
hand, he was much admired as one who despised the 
Pentateuch. Now that Mendelssohn, whose learned 
labors lined our trunks, was the father of this Men- 
delssohn, whose Greek music afflicts our ears. Nat- 
urally, then, it strikes me, that as ' papa' Mendelssohn 
attended the synagogue to save appearances, the filial 
Mendelssohn would also attend it. I likewise attended 
the synagogue now and then at Liverpool, and else- 
where. We all three have been cruising in the same 
latitudes ; and, trusting to my own remembrances, I 
should pronounce that Mendelssohn has stolen his 
Greek music from the synagogue. There was, in the 
first chorus of the ' Antigone,' one sublime ascent (and 
once repeated) that rang to heaven : it might have 
entered into the music of Jubal's lyre, or have glorified 



168 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

the timbrel of Miriam. All the rest, tried by the deep 
standard of my own feeling, that clamors for the im- 
passioned in music, even as the daughter of the horse- 
leech says, ' Give, give,' is as much without meaning as 
most of the Hebrew chanting that I heard at the Liver- 
pool synagogue. I advise Mr. Murray, in the event 
of his ever reviving the ' Antigone,' to make the chorus 
sing the Hundredth Psalm, rather than Mendelssohn's 
music ; or, vv^hich w^ould be better still, to import from 
Lancashire the Handel chorus-singers. 

But then, again, whatever change in the music were 
made, so as to ' better the condition ' of the poor audi- 
ence, something should really be done to ' better the 
condition ' of the poor chorus. Think of these worthy 
men, in their white and skyblue liveries, kept standing 
the whole evening ; no seats allowed, no dancing ; no 
tobacco ; nothing to console them but Antigone's beauty ; 
and all this in our climate, latitude fifty-five degrees, 
30th of December, and Fahrenheit groping about, I 
don't pretend to know where, but clearly on his road 
down to the wine cellar. Mr. Murray, I am perfectly 
sure, is too liberal to have grudged the expense, if he 
could have found any classic precedent for treating the 
chorus to a barrel of ale. Ale, he may object, is an 
unclassical tipple ; but perhaps not. Xenophon, the 
most Attic of prose writers, mentions pointedly in his 
Anabasis, that the Ten Thousand, when retreating 
through snowy mountains, and in circumstances very 
like our General Elphinstone's retreat from Cabul, 
came upon a considerable stock of bottled ale. To be 
sure, the poor ignorant man calls it barley wine^ 
[oivo? xqi&ivog :] but the flavor was found so perfectly 
classical that not one man of the ten thousand, not 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 169 

even the Attic bee himself, is reported to have left 
any protest against it, or indeed to have left much of 
the ale. 

But stop : perhaps I am intruding upon other men's 
space. Speaking, therefore, now finally to the prin- 
cipal question. How far did this memorable experiment 
succeed ? I reply, that, in the sense of realizing all 
that the joint revivers proposed to realize, it succeeded ; 
and failed only where these revivers had themselves 
failed to comprehend the magnificent tendencies of 
Gi-eek tragedy, or where the limitations of our theatres, 
arising out of our habits and social differences, had 
made it impossible to succeed. In London, I believe 
that there are nearly thirty theatres, and many more, 
if every place of amusement (not bearing the technical 
name of theatre) were included. All these must be 
united to compose a building such as that which re- 
ceived the vast audiences, and consequently the vast 
spectacles, of some ancient cities. And yet, from a 
great mistake in our London and Edinburgh attempts to 
imitate the stage of the Greek theatres, little use was 
made of such advantages as really were at our disposal. 
The possible depth of the Edinburgh stage was not 
laid open. Instead of a regal hall in Thebes, I protest 
I took it for the boudoir of Antigone. It was painted 
in light colors, an error which was abominable, though 
possibly meant by the artist (but quite unnecessarily) 
as a proper ground for relieving the sumptuous dresses 
of the leading performers. The doors of entrance and 
exit were most unhappily managed. As to the dresses, 
those of Creon, of his queen, and of the two loyal 
sisters, were good : chaste, and yet princely. The dress 
of the chorus was as bad as bad as could be : a few 



170 IHE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 

surplices borrowed from Episcopal chapels, or rather 
the ornamented albes, &c. from any rich Roman 
Catholic establishment, would have been more effec- 
tive. The CoryphcBUS himself seemed, to my eyes, no 
better than a railway laborer, fresh from tunnelling or 
boring, and wearing a Mouse to hide his working dress. 
These ill-used men ought to ' strike ' for better clothes, 
in case Antigone should again revisit the glimpses 
of an Edinburgh moon ; and at the same time they 
might mutter a hint about the ale. But the great hin- 
drances to a perfect restoration of a Greek tragedy, 
lie in peculiarities of our theatres that cannot be re- 
moved, because bound up with their purposes. 1 
suppose that Salisbury Plain would seem too vast a 
theatre : but at least a cathedral would be required in 
dimensions, York Minster or Cologne. Lamp-light 
gives to us some advantages which the ancients had 
not. But much art would be required to train and 
organize the lights and the masses of superincumbent 
gloom, that should be such as to allow no calculation 
of the dimensions overhead. Aboriginal night should 
brood over the scene, and the sweeping movements of 
the scenic groups : bodily expression should be given 
to the obscure feeling of that dark power which moved 
in ancient tragedy : and we should be made to know 
why it is that, with the one exception of the Persce^ 
founded on the second Persian invasion,^! in which 
jEschylus, the author, was personally a combatant, and 
therefore a conUmporary, not one of the thirty-four 
Greek tragedies surviving, but recedes into the dusky 
shades of the heroic, or even fabulous times. 

A failure, therefore, I think the ' Antigone,' in rela- 
tion to an object that for us is unattainable ; but a 



THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES. 171 

failure worth more than many ordinary successes. We 
arc all deeply indebted to Mr. Murray's liberality, in two 
senses ; to his liberal interest in the noblest section of 
ancient literature, and to his liberal disregard of ex- 
pense. To have seen a Grecian play is a great 
remembrance. To have seen Miss Helen Faucit's 
Antigone, were that all, with her bust, wg ayaX^iarog^^^ 
and her uplifted arm 'pleading against unjust tribu- 
nals,' is worth what is it worth > Worth the 

money ? How mean a thought ! To see Helen, to 
see Helen of Greece, was the chief prayer of Marlow's 
Dr. Faustus ■, the chief gift which he exacted from the 
fiend. To see Helen of Greece ? Dr. Faugtus, we 
have seen her : Mr. Murray is the Mephistopheles that 
fehowed her to us. It was cheap at the price of a 
journey to Siberia, and is the next best thing to having 
Been Waterloo at sunset on the 18th of June, 1815.^3 



NOTES. 



Note 1. Page 139. 

• When sown ; ' as it has been repeatedly ; a fact which some 
readers may not be aware of. 

Note 2. Page 141. 

Boileau, it is true, translated Longinus. But there goes little 
Greek to that. It is in dealing -with Attic Greek, and Attic poeit, 
that a man can manifest his Grecian skilL 

Note 3. Page 143. 

* Before God was known ; ' — i. e. known in Greece. 

Note 4. Page 146. 

At times, I say pointedly, the Athenian rather than the Grecian 
tragedy, in order to keep the reader's attention awake to a re- 
mark made by Paterculus, — viz. That although Greece coquet- 
tishly welcomed homage to herself, as generally concerned in the 
Greek literature, in reality Athens only had any original share in 
the drama, or in the oratory of Greece. 

Note 5. Page 150. 

' The supreme artist :' — It is chiefly by comparison with 
Euripides, that Sophocles is usually crowned with the laurels 
of art. But there is some danger of doing wrong to the truth in 
too blindly adhering to these old rulings of critical courts. The 
judgments would sometimes be reversed, if the pleadings were 
before us. There were blockheads in those days. Undoubtedly 

[173] 



174 • NOTES. 

it is past denyiug that Euripides at times betrays marks of care- 
lessness ia the structure of his plots, as if writing too much in a 
hurry : the original cast of the fable is sometimes not happy, and 
the evolution or disentangling is too precipitate. It is easy to see 
that he ■would have remoulded them in a revised edition, or 
diaskeue [Jfaozjujy.] On the other hand, I remember nothing in 
the Greek drama more worthy of a great artist tlian parts in his 
Phoenissoe. Neither is he the efifeminately tender, or merely 
pathetic poet that some people imagine. He was able to sweep 
all the chords of the impassioned spii-it. But the whole of this 
subject is in arrear : it is in fact res Integra, almost unbroken 
ground. . ' 

Note 6. Page 154. ,-S^^ 

I see a possible screw loose at this point : if you see it, reader, 
have the goodness to hold your tongue. 



Note 7. Page 157. 

* Athenian Theatre : ' — Many corrections remain to be made 
Athens, in her bloom, was about as big as Calcutta, which con 
tained, forty years ago, more than half a million of people ; or as 
Naples, which (being long rated at three hundred thousand), ia 
now known to contain at least two hundred thousand more. The 
well known census of Demetrius Phalereus gave twenty-one 
thousand citizens. Multiply this by 5, or 45 , and you have their 
families. Add ten thousand, multiplied by 4^, for the Inquilini. 
Then add four hundred thousand for the slaves : total, about five 
hundred and fifty thousand. But upon the fluctuations of the 
Athenian population there is much room for speculation. And, 
quaere, was not the population of Athens greater two centuries 
before Demetrius, in the days of Pericles ? 



Note 8. Page 159. 

Having no Sophocles at hand, I quote from memory, not pre- 
tending therefore to exactness : but the sense is what I state. 



NOTES. 175 

Note 9. Page 161 

Whose version, I do not know. But one unaccountable error 
was forced on one's notice. Thebes, wliicli by Milton and by 
every scholar is made a monosyllable, is here made a dissyllable. 
But Thcbez, the dissyllable, is a Syrian city. It is true that 
Causabon deduces from a Syriac word meaning a case or enclosure 
(a theca), the name of Thebes, whether Boeotian or Egyptian. It 
is probable, therefore, that Thebes the hundred-gated of Upper 
Egypt, Thebes the seven-gated of Greece, and Thebes of Syria, 
had all one origin as regards the name. But this matters not ; 
it is the English name that we are concerned with. 

Note 10. Page 162. 

* False : ' or rather inaccurate. The bui'lesque was not on the 
Antigone, but on the Medea of Euripides ; and very amusing. 

Note 11. Page 170. 

But in this instance, perhaps, distance of space, combiaed with 
the unrivalled grandeur of the war, was felt to equiponderate the 
distance of time, Susa, the Persian capital, being fourteen hun- 
dred miles from Athens. 

Note 12. Page 171. 

Zriora fl'oi? ayaliiaroc, her bosom as ike bosom of a statue; an 
expression of Eui-ipidcs, and applied, I think, to Polyxena at the 
moment of her sacrifice on the tomb of AchUles, as the bride that 
was being married to him at the moment of his death. 

Note 13. Page 171. 

Amongst the questions which occurred to me as requiring an 
answer, in connection with this revival, was one with regard to 
the comparative fitness of the Antigone for giving a rcpresentar- 
tive idea of the Greek stage. I am of opinion that it was the 
worst choice which could have been made ; and for the very 
reason which no doubt governed that choice, viz. — because the 
austerity of the tragic passion is disfigured by a love episode. 



176 NOTES. 

Kousscau in his letter to D'Alembert upon his article Geneve, in 
the French Encyclopedic, asks, — ' Qui est-ce qui douie que, sur 
nos theatres, la ineilleure piece de Sophocle ne tombdt tout-a-plat?' 
And his reason (as collected from other passages) is — because 
an interest derived from the passion of sexual love can rarely be 
found on the Greek stage, and yet cannot be dispensed with on 
that of Paris. But why was it so rare on the Greek stage ? Not 
from accident, but because it did not harmonize with the prin- 
ciple of that stage, and its vast overhanging gloom. It is the 
great infirmity of the French, and connected constitutionally with 
the gayety of their temperament, that they cannot sympathize 
with this terrific mode of grandeur. We can. And for us the 
choice should have been more purely and severely Grecian ; whilst 
the slenderness of the plot in any Greek tragedy, would require 
a far more effective support from tumultuous movement in the 
chorus. Even the French are not uniformly insensible to thia 
Grecian grandeur. I remember that Voltaire, amongst many 
just remarks on the Electra of Sophocles, mixed with others that 
are not just, bitterly condemns this demand for a love fable on 
the French stage, and illustrates its extravagance by the French 
tragedy on the same subject, of Crebillon. He (in default of any 
more suitable resource) has actually made Electra, whose char- 
acter on the Greek stage is painfully vindictive, in love with an 
imaginary son of .^gisthus, her father's murderer. Something 
should also have been said of Mrs. Leigh Murray's Ismene, which 
was very efiective in supporting and in relieving the magnificent 
impression of Antigone. I ought also to have added a note on 
the scenic mask, and the common notion (not authorized, I am 
satisfied, by the practice in the supreme era of Pericles), that it 
exhibited a Janus face, the windward side expressing grief or 
horror, the leeward expressing tranquillity. Believe it not, 
reader. But on this and other points, it wiU be better to speaV 
circumstantially, in a separate paper on the Greek drama, as » 
majestic but very exclusive and almost, if one may say so, bigoted 
form of the scenic art. 



THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY.* 

It sounds like the tolling of funeral bells, as the 
annunciation is made of one death after another 
amongst those who supported our canopy of empire 
through the last most memorable generation. The 
eldest of the Wellesleys is gone : he is gathered to 
his fathers ; and here we have his life circumstantially 
written. 

Who, and of what origin are the Wellesleys .'' There 
is an impression current amongst the public, or there 
toas an impression, that the true name of the Wellesley 
family is Wesley. This is a case very much resem- 
bling some of those imagined by the old scholastic 
logicians, where it was impossible either to deny or to 
affirm : saying yes, or saying no, equally you told a 
falsehood. The facts are these : the family was origi- 
nally English ; and in England, at the earliest era, 
there is no doubt at all that its name was De Welles 
leigh, which was pronounced in the eldest times just a!» 
it is now, viz. as a dissyllable,t the first syllablo 
sounding exactly like the cathedral city Wells, in 

♦ Memoirs and Correspondence. 

t '^s a dissyllable : ' — just as the Annesley fkmily, of which 
Lord Valentia is the present head, do not pronounce their name 
trisyllabically (as strangers often suppose) > but as the two sylla,- 
bles Anna lea, accent on the first. 

[177] 



178 THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. 

Somersetshire, and the second like Zea, (a field lying 
fallow.) It is plain enough, from various records, that 
the true historical genesis of the name, was precisely 
through that composition of words, which here, for the 
moment, I had imagined merely to illustrate its pro- 
nunciation. Lands in the diocese of Bath and Wells, 
lying by the pleasant river Perret, and almost up to 
the gates of Bristol, constituted the earliest possessions 
of the De Wellesleighs. They, seven centuries before 
Assay, and Waterloo, were ' seised ' of certain rich leas 
belonging to Wells. And from these Saxon elements 
of the name, some have supposed the Wellesleys a 
Saxon race. They could not possibly have better 
blood : but still the thing does not follow from the 
premises. Neither does it follow from the de that 
they were Norman. The first De Wellesley known to 
history, the very tip-top man of the pedigree, is Ave- 
nant de Wellesleigh. About a hundred years nearer 
to our own times, viz. in 1239, came Michael de Welles- 
leigh; of whom the important fact is recorded, that 
he was the father of Wellerand de Wellesley. And 
what did young Mr. Wellerand perform in this wicked 
world, that the proud muse of history should con- 
descend to notice his rather singular name ? Reader, 
he was — ' killed : ' that is all ; and in company with 
Sir Robert de Percival ; which again argues his Somer- 
setshire descent : for the family of Lord Egmont, the 
.lead of all Percivals, ever was, and ever will be, in 
Somersetshire. But how was he killed ? The time 
when, viz. 1303, the place where, are known : but the 
manner how, is not exactly stated ; it was in skirmisft 
with rascally Irish 'kernes,' fellows thaf (when pre- 
sented at the font of Christ for baptism) had their right 



THE MAKQUESS WELLESLEY. 179 

arms covered up from the baptismal waters, in order 
that, still remaining consecrated to the devil, those 
arms might inflict a devilish blow. Such a blow, with 
such an unbaptized arm, the Irish villain struck ; and 
there was an end of Wellerand de Wellesleigh. Strange 
that history should make an end of a man, before it 
had made a beginning of him. These, however, are 
ihe facts ; which, in writing a romance about Sir Wel- 
lerand and Sir Percival, I shall have great pleasure in 
falsifying. But how, says the too curious reader, did 
the De Wellcsleighs find themselves amongst Irish 
kernes ? Had these scamps the presumption to invade 
Somersetshire ? Did they dare to intrude into Wells ? 
Not at all : but the pugnacious De Wellesleys had 
dared to intrude into Ireland. Some say in the train 
of Henry II. Some say — but no matter: there they 
were : and there they stuck like limpets. They soon 
engrafted themselves into the county of Kildare ; from 
which, by means of a fortunate marriage, they leaped 
into the county of Meath ; and in that county, as if to 
refute the pretended mutability of human things, they 
have roosted ever since. There was once a famous 
copy of verses floating about Europe, which asserted 
that, whilst other princes were destined to fight for 
thrones, Austria — the handsome house of Hapsburgh 
— should obtain them by marriage : 

« Pugnabunt alii : tu, felLs Austria, nube.' 

So of the Wellesleys : Sir Wellerand took quite the 
wrong way : not cudgelling, but courting, was the cor- 
rect way for succeeding in Kildare. Two great estates, 
by two separate marriages, the De Wellcsleighs ob' 
tained in Kildare ; and, by a third marriage in a third 



180 THE MARQUESS WELLESLET. 

generation, they obtained in the county of Meath, 
Castle Dengan (otherwise Dangan) with loi'dships as 
plentiful as blackberries. Castle Dangan came to 
them in the year of our Lord, 1411, i. e. before Agin- 
court: and, in Castle Dangan did Field-marshal, the 
man of Waterloo, draw his first breath, shed his first 
tears, and perpetrate his earliest trespasses. That is 
what one might call a pretty long spell for one family : 
four hundred and thirty-five years has Castle Dangan 
furnished a nursery for the Wellesley piccaninnies. 
Amongst the lordships attached to Castle Dangan was 
Mornington, which more than three centuries after- 
wards supplied an earldom for the grandfather of 
Waterloo. Any further memorabilia of the Castle 
Dangan family are not recorded, except that in 1485 
(which sure was the year of Bosworth field ? ) they 
began to omit the de and to write themselves Welles- 
ley tout court. From indolexice, I presume : for a 
certain lady Di. le Fl., whom once I knew, a Howard 
by birth, of the house of Suffolk, told me as her reason 
for omitting the Le, that it caused her too much addi- 
tional trouble. 

So far the evidence seems in favor of Wellesley and 
against Wesley. But, on the other hand, during the 
last three centuries the Wellesleys wrote the name 
Wesley. They, however, were only the maternal an- 
cestors of the present Wellesleys. Garret Wellesley, 
the last male heir of the direct line, in the year 1745, 
left his whole estate to one of the Cowleys, a Stafford- 
shire family who had emigrated tp Ireland in Queen 
Elizabeth's time, but who were, however, descended 
from the Wellesleys. This Cowley or Colley , taking, 
in 1745, the name of Wesley, received from George 



THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. x81 

II. the title of Earl Mornlngton : and Colley's grand- 
son, the Marquess Wellesley of our age, was recorded 
in the Irish peerage as Weslerj^ Earl of Mornington ; 
was uniformly so described up to the end of the eigh- 
teenth century ; and even Arthur of Waterloo, whom 
most of us Europeans know pretty well, on going to 
India a little before his brother, was thus introduced by 
Lord Cornwallis to Sir John Shore (Lord Teignmouth, 
the Governor-general), 'Dear sir, I beg leave to intro- 
duce to you Colonel Wesley, who is a lieutenant-colonel 
of my regiment. He is a sensible man, and a good 
officer.' Posterity, for we are posterity in respect of 
Lord Cornwallis, have been very much of his opinion. 
Colonel Wesley really is a sensible man ; and the 
sensible man, soon after his arrival in Bengal, 
under the instigation of his brother, resumed the old 
name of Wellesley. In reality, the name of Wesley 
was merely the abbreviation of indolence, as Chumley 
for Cholmondeley, Pomfret for Pontefract, Cicester for 
Cirencester ; or, in Scotland, Marchbanks for Majori- 
banks, Chatorow for the Duke of Hamilton's French 
title of Chatelherault. I remember myself, in child- 
hood, to have met a niece of John Wesley the Proto- 
Methodist, who always spoke of the second Lord 
Mornington (author of the well-known glees) as a 
cousin, and as intimately connected with her brother 
the great foudroy ant performer on the organ. Southey, 
in his Life of John Wesley, tells us that Charles 
Wesley, the brother of John, and father of the great 
organist, had the offer from Garret Wellesley of those 
same estates which eventually were left to Richard 
Cowley. This argues a recognition of near consan- 
guinity. Why the offer was declined, is not distinctly 



182 THE MARQUESS WELLE SLEY. 

explained. But if it had been accepted, Southey 
thinks that then we should have had no storming of 
Seringapatam, no Waterloo, and no Arminian Metho- 
dists. All that is not quite clear. Tippoo was booked 
for a desperate British vengeance by his own desperate 
enmity to our name, though no Lord Wellesley had 
been Governor-General. Napoleon, by the same fury 
of hatred to us, was booked for the same fate, though 
the scene of it might not have been Waterloo. And, 
as to John Wesley, why should he not have made the 
same schism with the English Church, because his 
brother Charles had become unexpectedly rich ? 

The Marquess Wellesley was of the same standing, 
as to age, or nearly so, as Mr. Pitt ; though he outlived 
Pitt by almost forty years. Born in 1760, three or 
four months before the accession of George III., he 
was sent to Eton, at the age of eleven ; and from Eton, 
in his eighteenth year, he was sent to Christ Church, 
Oxford, where he matriculated as a nobleman. He 
then bore the courtesy title of Viscount Wellesley ; but 
in 1781, when he had reached his twenty-first year, he 
was summoned away from Oxford by the death of his 
father, the second Earl of Mornington. It is interest- 
ing, at this moment, to look back on the family group 
of children collected at Dangan Castle. The young 
earl was within a month of his majority : his younger 
brothers and sisters were, William Wellesley Pole 
(since dead, under the title of Lord Maryborough), 
then aged eighteen ; Anne, since married to Henry, 
son of Lord Southampton, aged thirteen ; Arthur^ aged 
twelve ; Gerald Valerian, now in the church, agea 
ten ; Mary Elizabeth (since Lady Culling Smith), aged 
nine ; Henry, since Lord Cowley, and British ambas- 



THE MARQUESS WELLESLET. 183 

Bador to Spain, France, &c. aged eight. The new 
Lord Mornington showed his conscientious nature, by 
assuming his father's debts, and by superintending the 
education of his brothers. He had distinguished him- 
self at Oxford as a scholar ; but he returned thither no 
more, and took no degree. As Earl of Mornington, 
he sat in the Irish House of Lords ; but not being a 
British peer, he was able to sit also in the English 
House of Commons ; and of this opening for a more 
national career, he availed himself at the age of 
twenty-four. Except that he favored the claims of the 
Irish Catholics, his policy was pretty uniformly that 
of Mr. Pitt. He supported that minister throughout 
the contests on the French Revolution ; and a little 
earlier, on the Regency question. This came forward 
in 1788, on occasion of the first insanity which attacked 
George III, The reader, who is likely to have been 
born since that era, will perhaps not be acquainted 
with the constitutional question then at issue. It was 
this : iSfr. Fox held that, upon any incapacity arising 
in the sovereign, the regency would then settle (ipso 
facto of that incapacity) upon the Prince of Wales ; 
overlooking altogether the case in which there should 
be no Prince of Wales, and the case in which such a 
Prince might be as incapable, from youth, of exer- 
cising the powers attached to the office, as his father 
from disease. Mr. Pitt denied that a Prince of Wales 
simply as such, and apart from any moral fitness which 
he might possess, had more title to the office of regent 
than any lamp-lighter or scavenger. It \vas the prov- 
ince of Parliament exclusively to legislate for the par- 
ticular case. The practical decision of the question 
was not called for, from the accident of the king's 



184 THE MAEQUESS -WELLESLEY. 

sudden recovery : but in Ireland, from the indepen- 
dence asserted by the two houses of the British councils, 
the question grew still more complex. The Lord 
Lieutenant refused to transmit their address,* and 
Lord Mornington supported him powerfully in his 
refusal. 

Ten years after this hot collision of parties, Lord 
Mornington was appointed Governor-General of India ; 
and now first he entered upon a stage worthy of his 
powers. I cannot myself agree with Mr. Pearce, that 
' the wisdom of his policy is now universally recog- 
nized ; ' because the same false views of our Indian 
position, which at that time caused his splendid ser- 
vices to be slighted in many quarters, still prepon- 
derates. All administrations alike have been intensely 
ignorant of Indian politics ; and for the natural reason, 
that the business of home politics leaves them no dis- 
posable energies for affairs so distant, and with which 
each man's chance of any durable connection is so 
exceedingly small. What Lord Mornington did was 
this : he looked our prospects in the face. Two great 
enemies were then looming upon the horizon, both 
ignorant of our real resources, and both deluded by 
our imperfect use of such resources, as, even in a pre- 
vious war, we had possessed. One of these enemies 
was Tippoo, the Sultan of Mysore : him, by the crush- 
ing energy of his arrangements. Lord Mornington was 
able utterly to destroy, and to distribute his dominions 
with equity and moderation, yet so as to prevent any 

* Which adopted neither view ; for by offering the regency of 
Ireland to the Prince of Wales, they negatived Mr. Fox's view, 
who held it to be the Prince's by inherent right ; and, on the 
other hand, they still more openly opposed Mr. Pitt. 



THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. 185 

new coalition arising in that quarter against the British 
power. There is a portrait of Tippoo, of this veiy 
tiger, in the second volume of Mr. Pearce's work, 
which expresses sufficiently the unparalleled ferocity 
of his nature ; and it is guaranteed, by its origin, as 
authentic. Tippoo, from the personal interest investing 
him, has more fixed the attention of Europe than a 
much more formidable enemy : that enemy was the 
Mahratta confederacy, chiefly existing in the persons 
of the Peishwah, of Scindia, of Holkar, and the Rajah 
of Berar. Had these four princes been less profoundly 
ignorant, had they been less inveterately treacherous, 
they would have cost us the only dreadful struggle 
which in India we have stood. As it was. Lord Morn- 
ington's government reduced and crippled the Mah- 
rattas to such an extent, that in 1817, Lord Hastings 
found it possible to crush them for ever. Three ser- 
vices of a profounder nature. Lord Wellesley was 
enabled to do for India ; first, to pave the way for the 
propagation of Christianity, — mighty service, stretch- 
ing to the clouds, and which, in the hour of death, 
must have given him consolation ; secondly, to enter 
upon the abolition of such Hindoo superstitions as are 
most shocking to humanity, particularly the practice 
of Suttee, and the barbarous exposure of dying per- 
sons, or of first-born infants at Sanger on the Ganges ; 
finally, to promote an enlarged system of education, 
which (if his splendid scheme had been adopted) would 
have difiused its benefits all over India. It ought also 
to be mentioned that the expedition by way of the Red 
Sea against the French in Egypt, was so entirely of 
his suggestion and his preparation', that, to the great 
dishonor of Messrs. Pitt and Dundas, whose adminis- 
16 



186 THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. 

tration was the worst, as a war administration, that 
ever misapplied, or non-applied, the resources of a 
mighty empire, it languished for eighteen months 
purely through their neglect. 

In 1805, having staid about seven years in India, 
Lord Mornington was recalled, was created Marquess 
of Wellesley, was sent, in 1821, as Viceroy to Ireland, 
where there was little to do ; having previously, in 
1809, been sent Ambassador to the Spanish Cortes, 
where there was an affinity to do, but no means of 
doing it. The last great political act of Lord Welles- 
ley, was the smashing of the Peel ministry in 1834 ; 
viz. by the famous resolution (which he personally 
drew up) for appropriating to general education in 
Ireland any surplus arising from the revenues of the 
Irish Church. Full of honors, he retired from public 
life at the age of seventy-five, and, for seven years 
more of life, dedicated his time to such literary pur- 
suits as he had found most interesting in early youth. 

Mr. Pearce, who is so capable of writing vigorously 
and sagaciously, has too much allowed himself to rely 
upon public journals. For example, he reprints the 
whole of the attorney-generaPs official information 
against eleven obscure persons, who, from the gallery 
of the Dublin theatre, did ' wickedly, riotously, and 
routously' hiss, groan, insult, and assault (to say 
nothing of their having caused and procured to be 
hissed, groaned, &c.) the Marquess Wellesley, Lord- 
Lieutenant General, and General Governor oi Ireland. 
This document covers more than nine pages , and, 
after all, omits the only fact of the least consequence, 
viz., that several missiles were thrown by the rioters 
into the vice-regal box, and amongst them a quart- 



THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. 187 

bottle, wliich barely, missed his excellency s temples. 
Considering the impetus acquired by the descent from 
the galleiy, there is little doubt that such a weapon 
would have killed Lord Wellesley on the spot. In de- 
fault however, of this weighty fact, the attorney-general 
favors us with memorializing the very best piece of 
doggerel that I remember to have read ; viz., that upon 
divers, to wit, three thousand papers, the rioters had 
wickedly and maliciously written and printed, besides, 
observe, causing to be written and printed, ' No 
Popery,' as also the following traitorous couplet — 

• The Protestants want Talbot, 
As the Papists have got all but ; ' 

Meaning 'all but' that which they got some years 
ater by means of the Clare election. Yet if, in some 
instances like this, Mr. Pearce has too largely drawn 
upon official papers, which he should rather have ab- 
stracted and condensed, on the other hand, his work 
has a specific value in bringing forward private docu- 
ments, to which his opportunities have gained him 
a confidential access. Two portraits of Lord Welles- 
ley, one in middle life, and one in old age, from 
a sketch by the Comte d'Orsay, are felicitously exe- 
cuted. 

Something remains to be said of Lord Wellesley as a 
literary man ; and towards such a judgment Mr. Pearce 
has contributed some very pleasing materials. As a 
public speaker. Lord Wellesley had that degree of 
brilliancy and effectual vigor, which might have been 
expected in a man of great talents, possessing much 
native sensibility to the charms of style, but not led by 
any personal accidents of life into a separate cultiva 



188 THE MARQTTESS WELLESLET. 

vation of oratory, or into any profound investigation 
of its duties and its powers on the arena of a British 
senate. There is less call for speaking of Lord Welles- 
ley in this character, where he did not seek for any 
eminent distinction, than in the more general character 
of an elegant litterateur^ which furnished to him much 
of his recreation in all stages of his life, and much of 
his consolation in the last. It is interesting to see this 
accomplished nobleman, in advanced age, when other 
resources were one by one decaying, and the lights of 
life were successively fading into darkness, still cheer- 
ing his languid hours by the culture of classical litera- 
ture, and in his eighty-second year drawing solace 
from those same pursuits which had given grace and 
distinction to his twentieth. 

One or two remarks I will make upon Lord Welles- 
ley's verses — Greek as well as Latin. The Latin 
lines upon Chantrey's success at Holkham in killing 
two woodcocks at the first shot, which subsequently he 
sculptured in marble and presented to Lord Leicester, 
are perhaps the most felicitous amongst the whole. 
Masquerading, in Lord Wellesley's verses, as Praxi- 
teles, who could not well be represented with a Manon 
having a percussion lock, Chantrey is armed with a 
bow and arrows : 

« En ! trajecit aves una sagitta duas.' 

In the Greek translation of ParthenopcBus, there are as 
few faults as could reasonably be expected. But, first, 
one word as to the original Latin poem : to whom does 
it belong ? It is traced first to Lord Grenville, who 
received it from his tutor (afterwards Bishop of Lon- 
don), who had taken it as an anonymous poem from 



THE MARQUESS WELLESLET. 189 

the ' Censor's book;' and with very little probability, 
it is doubtfully assigned to ' Lewis of the War Office,' 
meaning, no doubt, the father of Monk Lewis. By this 
anxiety in tracing its pedigree, the reader is led to ex- 
aggerate the pretensions of the little poem ; these are 
inconsiderable : and there is a conspicuous fault, which 
it is worth while noticing, because it is one peculiarly 
besetting those who write modern verses with the help 
of a gradus, viz. that the Pentameter is often a mere 
reverberation of the preceding Hexameter. Thus, for 
instance — 

• Parthenios inter saltus non amplius erro, 
Non repeto Dryadum pascua laeta clioris ; ' 

and so of others, where the second line is but a varia- 
tion of the first. Even Ovid, with all his fertility, and 
partly in consequence of his fertility, too often commits 
this fault. Where indeed the thought is effectually 
varied, so that the second line acts as a musical minor, 
succeeding to the major, in the first, there may happen 
to arise a peculiar beauty. But I speak of the ordinary 
case, where the second is merely the rebound of the 
first, presenting the same thought in a diluted form. 
This is the commonest resource of feeble thinking, and 
is also a standing temptation or snare for feeble think- 
ing. Lord Wellesley, however, is not answerable for 
these faults in the original, which indeed he notices 
s'-ghtly as ' repetitions ; ' and his own Greek version is 
spirited and good. There, are, however, some mistakes. 
The second line is altogether faulty ; 

Xo)Qta AlaivaXiro navr* iQaretva 6tip 
* Aj^t'Vfisvog Xeintov 

does not express t' e sense intended. Construed cor* 



190 THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. 

rectly, this clause of the sentence would mean — '1 
sorrowfully leaving all places gracious to the Mcena- 
lian god : ' but that is not what Lord Wellesley de- 
signed : ' I leaving the woods of Cyllene, and the 
snowy summits of Pholoe, places that are all of them 
dear to Pan"" — that is what was meant: that is to 
say, not leaving all places dear to Pan, far from it ; 
but leaving a few places, every one of which is dear to 
Pan. In the line beginning 

Kav f6 v(p' ifXixtag 

where the meaning is — and if as yet, by reason of my 
immature age, there is a metrical error ; and yj^txia will 
not express immaturity of age. I doubt whether in the 
next line, 

Mijd' aXy.i] 6aXXoi. yovvaaiv yi^iog 

yovvaaiv could convey the meaning without the preposi* 
tion fv. And in 

STitQxofiat ov xaXiovoi ^toi. 

I hasten whither the gods summon me — ov is not the 
right word. It is, however, almost impossible to write 
Greek verses which shall be liable to no verbal objec- 
tions; and the fluent movement of these verses suf- 
ficiently argues the off-hand ease with which Lord 
Wellesley must have read Greek, writing it so ele- 
gantly and with so little of apparent constraint. 

Meantime the most interesting (from its circum- 
stances) of Lord Wellesley's verses, is one to which 
his own English interpretation of it has done less than 
justice. It is a Latin epitaph on the daughter (an only 
child) of Lord and Lady Brougham. She died, ana 
(as was generally known at the time) of an organic 
affection disturbing the action of the heart, at the early 



THE MARQUESS WELLESLET. 191 

age of eighteen. And the peculiar interest of the case 
lies in tlie suppression by this pious daughter (so far 
as it was possible) of her own bodily anguish, in order 
to beguile the mental anguish of her parents. The 
Latin epitaph is this : 

' Blanda anima, e cunis heu ! longo exercita morbo. 
Inter maternas heu lachrymasque pati'is, 

Quas risu lenire tuo jucunda solebas, 
Et levis, et proprii \ix memor ipsa mali ; 

I, pete calestes, ubi nulla est cura, recessus : 
Et tibi sit nuUo mista dolore quies ! ' 

The English version is this : 

* Doom'd to long suffering from earliest years, 
Amidst your parents' grief and pain alone 
Cheerful and gay, you smiled to soothe their tears ; 

And in their agonies forgot your own. 
Go, gentle spirit ; and among the blest 
From grief and pain eternal be thy rest ! ' 

In the Latin, the phrase e cunis does not express 
from your cradle upwards. The second line is faulty 
in the opposition of maternas to patris. And in the 
fourth line levis conveys a false meaning : levis must 
mean either physically lights i. e. not heavy, which is 
not the sense, or else tainted with levity, which is still 
less the sense. What Lord Wellesley wished to say — 
was light-hearted : this he has not said : but neither is 
it easy to say it in good Latin. 

I complain, however, of the whole as not bringing 
out Lord Weslesley's own feeling — which feeling is 
partly expressed in his verses, and partly in his accom- 
panying prose note on Miss Brougham's mournful 
destiny (' her life was a continual illness ') contrasted 
with her fortitude, her innocent gaiety, and the pious 
motives with which she supported this gaiety to the 



192 



THE MAKQTTESS WELLESLEY. 



last. Not as a direct version, but as filling up the out- 
line of Lord Wellesley, sufficiently indicated by him- 
Belf, I propose this : — 

* Child, that for thirteen years hast fought with pain. 

Prompted by joy and depth of natural love, — 
Rest now at God's command : oh ! not in vain 

His angel ofttimes watch'd thee, — oft, above 
All pangs, that else had dimm'd thy parents' eyes. 
Saw thy young heart victoriously rise. 
Rise now for ever, self-forgetting child. 

Rise to those choirs, where love like thine is blest. 
From pains of flesh — from filial tears assoil'd. 

Love which God's hand shall crown with God's own rest 



1 



MILTON VERSUS SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 

This conversation is doubly interesting : interesting 
by its subject, interesting by its interlocutors ; for the 
subject is Milton, whilst the interlocutors are Southey 
and Landor. If a British gentleman, when taking his 
pleasure in his well-armed yacht, descries, in some 
foreign waters, a noble vessel, from the Thames or the 
Clyde, riding peaceably at anchor — and soon after, 
two smart-looking clippers, with rakish masts, bearing 
down upon her in company — he slackens sail : his 
suspicions are slightly raised ; they have not shown 
their teeth as yet, and perhaps all is right ; but there 
can be no harm in looking a little closer ; and, as- 
suredly, if he finds any mischief in the wind against 
his countryman, he will show his teeth also ; and, 
please the wind, will take up such a position as to rake 
both of these pirates by turns. The two dialogists are 
introduced walking out after breakfast, ' each his Mil- 
ton in his pocket ; ' and says Southey, ' Let us collect 
all the graver faults we can lay our hands upon, with- 
out a too minute and troublesome research;' — just 
so ; there would be danger in that — help might put 
off from shore ; — ' not,' says he, ' in the spirit of John- 
son, but in our own.' Johnson we may suppose, is 
some old ruffian well known upon that coast ; and 
^faults ' may be a flash term for what the Americans 
17 [193] 



194 MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 

call ' notions.' A part of the cargo it clearly is ; and 
one is not surprised to hear Landor, whilst assenting 
to the general plan of attack, suggesting in a whisper, 
' that they should abase their eyes in reverence to so 
great a man, without absolutely closing them ; ' which 
I take to mean — that, without trusting entirely to their 
boarders, or absolutely closing their ports, they should 
depress their guns and fire down into the hold, in re- 
spect of the vessel attacked standing so high out of the 
water. After such plain speaking, nobody can wonder 
much at the junior pirate (Landor) muttering, ' It will 
be difficult for us always to refrain.' Of course it will : 
refraining was no part of the business, I should fancy, 
taught by that same buccaneer, Johnson. There is 
mischief, you see, reader, singing in the air — ' miching 
malhecho ' — and it is our business to watch it. 

But, before coming to the main attack, I must suffer 
myself to be detained for a few moments by what Mr. 
L. premises upon the ' moral ' of any great fable, 
and the relation which it bears, or should bear, to the 
solution of such a fable. Philosophic criticism is so 
far improved, that, at this day, few people, who have 
reflected at all upon such subjects, but are agreed as 
to one point: viz., that in metaphysical language the 
moral of an epos or a drama should be immanent, not 
transient ; or, otherwise, that it should be vitally dis- 
tributed through the whole organization of the tree, not 
gathered or secreted into a sort of red berry or race- 
mus, pendent at the end of its boughs. This view Mr. 
Landor himself takes, as a general view ; but, strange 
to say, by some Landorian perverseness, where there 
occurs a memorable exception to this rule (as in the 
* Paradise Lost'), in that case he insists upon the rule 



MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 195 

m its rigor — the rule, and nothing hut the rule. 
Where, on the contrary, the rule does really and ob- 
viously take effect (as in the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey'), 
there he insists upon an exceptional case. There is 
a moral, in his opinion, hanging like a tassel of gold 
bullion from the ' Iliad ; ' — and what is it ? Some- 
thing so fantastic, that I decline to repeat it. As well 
might he have said, that the moral of ' Othello' was — 
' Try Warren^s Blacking ! ' There is no moral, 
little or big, foul or fair, to the ' Iliad.' Up to the 17th 
book, the moral might seem dimly to be this — ' Gen- 
tlemen, keep the peace : you see what comes of quar- 
relling.' But there this moral ceases ; — there is now 
a break of guage : the narrow guage takes place after 
this; whilst up to this point, the broad guage — viz., 
the wrath of Achilles, growing out of his turn-up with 
Agamemnon — had carried us smoothly along without 
need to shift our luggage. There is no more quarrel- 
ling after Book 17, how then can there be any more 
moral from quarrelling ? If you insist on my telling 
you what is the moral of the ' Iliad,' I insist upon your 
telling me what is the moral of a rattlesnake or the 
moral of a Niagara. I suppose the moral is — that 
you must get out of their way, if you mean to moralize 
much longer. The going-up (or anabasis) of the 
Greeks against Troy, was a fact ; and a pretty dense 
fact; and, by accident, the very first in which all 
Greece had a common interest. It was a joint-stock 
concern — a representative expedition — whereas, pre- 
viously there had been none ; for even the Argonautic 
expedition, which is rather of the darkest, implied no 
confederation except amongst individuals. How could 
it ? For the Argo is supposed to have measured only 



lifQ MILTON VS. SOTTTHEY AND LANDOE. 

twenty-seven tons : how she would have been classed 
at Lloyd's is hard to say, but certainly not as A 1. 
There was no state-cabin ; everybody, demi-gods and 
all, pigged in the steerage amongst beans and bacon. 
Greece was naturally proud of having crossed the her- 
ring-pond, small as it was, in search of an entrenched 
enemy ; proud also of having licked him ' into Al- 
mighty smash ; ' this was sufficient ; or if an imperti- 
nent moralist sought for something more, doubtless the 
moral must have lain in the booty. A peach is the 
moral of a peach, and moral enough ; but if a man 
will have something better — a moral within a moral — 
why, there is the peach-stone, and its kernel, out of 
which he may make ratafia, which seems to be the 
ultimate morality that can be extracted from a peach. 
Mr. Archdeacon Williams, indeed, of the Edinburgh 
Academy, has published an octavo opinion upon the 
case, which asserts that the moral of the Trojan war 
was (to borrow a phrase from children) tit for tat. It 
was a case of retaliation for crimes against Hellas, 
committed by Troy in an earlier generation. It may 
be so ; Nemesis knows best. But this moral, if it con- 
cerns the total expedition to the Troad, cannot concern 
the ' Iliad,' which does not take up matters from so 
early a period, nor go on to the final catastrophe of 
Ilium. 

Now, as to the ' Paradise Lost,' it happens that there 
is — whether there ought to be or not — a pure golden 
moral, distinctly announced, separately contemplated, 
and the very weightiest ever uttered by man or realized 
by fable. It is a moral rather for the drama of a 
world than for a human poem. And this moral is 
made the more prominent and memorable by the 



MILTON VS. &OUTHEY AND LANDOR. 197 

grandeur of its annunciation. The jewel is not more 
splendid in itself than in its setting. Excepting the 
well-known passage on Athenian oratory in the ' Para- 
dise Regained,' there is none even in Milton where the 
metrical pomp is made so effectually to aid the pomp 
of the sentiment. Hearken to the way in which a roll 
of dactyles is made to settle, like the swell of the ad- 
vancing tide, into the long thunder of billows breaking 
foj leagues against the shore : 

• That to the height of this great argument 
I may assert eternal Providence.' 

Hear what a motion, what a tumult, is given by the 
dactylic close to each of the introductory lines ! And 
how massily is the whole locked up into the peace of 
heaven, as the aerial arch of a viaduct is locked up 
into tranquil stability by its key-stone, through the deep 
spondaic close, 

' And justify the Tvays of God to man.' 

That is the moral of the Miltonic epos ; and as much 
grander than any other moral formally illustrated by 
poets, as heaven is higher than earth. 

But the most singular moral, which Mr. Landor any- 
where discovers, is in his own poem of ' Gehir* 
Whether he still adheres to it, does not appear from 
the present edition. But I remember distinctly, in the 
original edition, a Preface (now withdrawn) in which 
he made his acknowledgments to some book read at a 
Welsh Inn for the outline of the story ; and as to the 
moral, he declared it to be an exposition of that most 
mysterious offence, Ooer-Colonization. Much I mused, 
in my youthful simplicity, upon this criminal novelty. 
What might it be } Could I, by mistake, have com« 



198 MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 

mitted it myself? Was it a felony, or a misde- 
meanor? — liable to transportation, or only to fine and 
imprisonment? Neither in the Decemviral Tables, 
nor in the Code of Justinian, nor the maritime Code 
of Oleron, nor in the Canon Law, nor the Code Napo- 
leon, nor our own Statutes at large, nor in Jeremy 
Bentham, had I read of such a crime as a possibility. 
Undoubted^ the vermin, locally called Squatters,* 
both in the wilds of America and Australia, who pre- 
occupy other men's estates, have latterly illustrated the 
logical possibility of such an offence ; but they were 
quite unknown at the era of Gebir. Even Dalica, who 
knew as much wickedness as most people, would have 
stared at this unheard of villany, and have asked, as 
eagerly as I did — ' What is it now ? Let's have a 
shy at it in Egypt.' I, indeed, knew a case, but 
Dalica did not, of shocking over-colonization. It was 
the case, which even yet occurs on out-of-the-way 
roads, where a man, unjustly big, mounts into the in- 
side of a stage-coach already sufficiently ci'owded. In 
streets and squares, where men could give him a wide 
berth, they had tolerated the injustice of his person ; 
but now, in a chamber so confined, the length and 
breadth of his wickedness shines revealed to every 
eye. And if the coach should upset, which it would 

* Squatters : — They are a sort of self-elected warming-pans. 
What we in England mean by the political term ' warming-pans,'' 
are men who occupy, by consent, some official place, or Par- 
liamentary seat, until the proper claimant is old enough in law 
to assume his rights. When the true man comes to bed, the 
warming-pan respectfully turns out. But these ultra-marine 
warnung-pans wouldn't turn out. They showed fight, and 
wouldn't hear of the true man, even as a bed-fellow. 



MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOK. 199 

not be the less likely to do for having him on board, 
somebody or other (perhaps myself) must lie beneath 
this monster, like Enceladus under Mount Etna, call- 
ing upon Jove to come quickly with a few thunderbolts 
and destroy both man and mountain, both succubus and 
incubus, if no other relief offered. Meantime, the only 
case of over-colonization notorious to all Europe, is 
that which some German traveller (Riedesel, I think) 
has reported so eagerly, in ridicule of our supposed 
English credulity; viz. — the case of the foreign 
swindler, who advertised that he would get into a quart 
bottle, filled Drury Lane, pocketed the admission 
money, and decamped, protesting (in his adieus to the 
spectators) that ' it lacerated his heart to disappoint so 
many noble islanders ; but that on his next visit he 
would make full reparation by getting into a vinegar 
cruet.' Now, here certainly was a case of over- 
colonization, not perpetrated, but meditated. Yet, 
when one examines this case, the crime consisted by 
no means in doing it, but in not doing it ; by no means 
in getting into the bottle, but in not getting into it. 
The foreign contractor would have been probably a 
very unhappy man, had he fulfilled his contract by 
over-colonizing the bottle, but he would have been 
decidedly a more virtuous man. He would have 
redeemed his pledge ; and, if he had even died in 
the bottle, we should have honored him as a ' vir 
bonus, cum mala fortund compositus ; ' as a man of 
honor matched in single duel with calamity, and also 
as the best of conjurers. Over-colonization, therefore, 
except in the one case of the stage-coach, is apparently 
no crime ; and the offence of King Gebir, in my eyes, 
remains a mystery to this day. 



200 MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 

What next solicits notice is in the nature of a 
digression : it is a kind of parenthesis on Words- 
worth. 

'■Landor. — "When it was a matter of wonder how 
Keats, who was ignorant of Greek, could have written 
his " Hyperion," Shelley, whom envy never touched, 
gave as a reason — " because he was a Greek." Words- 
worth, being asked his opinion of the same poem, 
called it, scoffingly, " a pretty piece of paganism ; " yet 
he himself, in the best verses he ever wrote — and 
beautiful ones they are — reverts to the powerful in- 
fluence of the " pagan creed." ' 

Here are nine lines exactly in the original type. 
Now, nine tailors are ranked, by great masters of 
algebra, as = one man ; such is the received equa- 
tion ; or, as it is expressed, with more liveliness, in an 
old English drama, by a man who meets and quarrels 
with eighteen tailors — ' Come, hang it ! I'll fight you 
hoth.^ But, whatever be the algebraic ratio of tailors 
to men, it is clear that nine Landorian lines are not 
always equal to the delivery of one accurate truth, or 
to a successful conflict with three or four signal errors. 
Firstly — Shelley's reason, if it ever was assigned, is 
irrelevant as regards any question that must have been 
intended. It could not have been meant to ask — 
Why was the ' Hyperion ' so Grecian in its spirit ? for 
it is anything but Grecian. We should praise it falsely 
to call it so ; for the feeble, though elegant, mythology 
of Greece was incapable of breeding anything so deep 
as the mysterious portents that, in the ' Hyperion,' run 
before and accompany the passing away of divine im- 
memorial dynasties. Nothing can be more impressive 
than the picture of Saturn in his palsy of afflicti'^in, and 



MILTON VS. SOTJTHEY AND LANDOR. 201 

of the mighty goddess his grand-daughter, or than the 
secret signs of coming woe in the palace of Hyperion. 
These things grew from darker creeds than Greece 
had ever known since the elder traditions of Pro- 
metheus — creeds that sent down their sounding plum- 
mets into far deeper wells within the human spirit. 
What had been meant, by the question proposed to 
Shelley, was no doubt — How so young a man as Keats, 
not having had the advantage of a regular classical 
education, could have been so much at home in the 
details of the elder mythology ? Tooke's ' Pantheon ' 
might have been obtained by favor of any English 
schoolboy, and Dumoustier's ' Lettres a Emile sur la 
Mijthologie ' by favor of very many young ladies ; but 
these, according to my recollection of them, would 
hardly have sufhced. Spence's ' Polymeiis,'' however, 
might have been had by favor of any good library ; 
and the ' Bibliotheca ' of Apollodorus, who is the cock 
of the walk on this subject, might have been I'ead by 
favor of a Latin translation, supposing Keats really 
unequal to the easy Greek text. There is no wonder 
in the case ; nor, if there had been, would Shelley's 
kind remark have solved it. The treatment of the 
facts must, in any case, have been due to Keats's 
genius, so as to be the same whether he had studied 
Greek or not : the facts, apart from the treatment, 
must in any case have been had from a book. Sec- 
ondly — Let Mr. Landor rely upon it — that Words- 
worth never said the thing ascribed to him here as any 
formal judgment, or what Scottish law would call 
deliverance, upon the ' Hyperion.' As to what ho 
might have said incidentally and collaterally ; the 
meaning of words is so entirely affected by their posi- 



202 MILTON VS. SOTTTHEY AND LANDOR. 

tion in a conversation — what followed, what went be- 
fore — that five words dislocated from their context 
never would be received as evidence in the Queen's 
Bench. The court which, of all others, least strictly 
weighs its rules of evidence, is the female tea-table ; 
yet even that tribunal would require the deponent to 
strengthen his evidence, if he had only five detached 
words to produce. Wordsworth is a very proud man, 
as he has good reason to be ; and perhaps it was 1, 
myself, who once said in print of him — that it is not 
the correct way of speaking, to say that Wordsworth 
is as proud as Lucifer ; but, inversely, to say of Lucifer 
that some people have conceived him to be as proud 
as Wordsworth. But, if proud, Wordsworth is not 
haughty, is not ostentatious, is not anxious for display, 
is not arrogant, and, least of all, is he capable of de- 
sceiiding to envy. Who or what is it that he should be 
envious of? Does anybody suppose that Wordsworth 
would be jealous of Archimedes if he now walked 
upon earth, or Michael Angelo, or Milton ? Nature 
does not repeat herself. Be assured she will never 
make a second Wordsworth. Any of us would be 
jealous of his own duplicate ; and, if I had a doppel- 
ganger, who went about personating me, copying me, 
and pirating me, philosopher as I am, I might (if the 
Court of Chancery would not grant an injunction 
against him) be so far carried away by jealousy as to 
attempt the crime of murder upon his carcass ; and no 
great matter as regards him. But it would be a sad 
thing for me to find myself hanged ; and for what, 1 
beseech you ? for murdering a sham, that was either 
nobody at all, or oneself repeated once too often. But 
if you show to Wordsworth a man as great as himself 



MILTON VS. SOTTTHEY AND LANDOR. 203 

Still tlmt gi-eat man will not be much like Words- 
worth — the great man will not be Wordsworth's 
doppelganger. If not impar (as you say) he will be 
dispar ; and why, then, should Wordsworth be jealous 
of him, unless he is jealous of the sun, and of Abd el 
Kader, and of Mr. Waghorn — all of whom carry off a 
great deal of any spare admiration which Europe has 
to dispose of. But suddenly it strikes me that we are 
all proud, every man of us ; and I daresay with some 
reason for it, ' be the same more or less.' For I never 
came to know any man in my whole life intimately, 
who could not do something or other better than any- 
body else. The only man amongst us that is thoroughly 
free from pride, that you may at all seasons rely on as 
a pattern of humility, is the pickpocket. That man is 
so admirable in his temper, and so used to pocketing 
anything whatever which Providence sends in his way, 
that he will even pocket a kicking, or anything in that 
line of favors which you are pleased to bestow. The 
smallest donations are by him thankfully received, 
provided only that you, whilst half-blind with anger in 
kicking him round a figure of eight, like a dexterous 
skater, will but allow him (which is no more than fair) 
to have a second ' shy ' at your pretty Indian pocket- 
handkerchief, so as to convince you, on cooler reflec- 
tion, that he does not always miss. Thirdly — Mr. 
Landor leaves it doubtful what verses those are of 
Wordsworth's which celebrate the power ' of the Pagan 
creed ; ' whether that sonnet in which Wordsworth 
Avishes to exchange for glimpses of human life, then 
and in those circumstances, ' forlorn,' the sight 

♦ Of Proteus coming from the sea, 

And hear old Triton vrind his wreathed horn ; * 



204 MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOK. 

whether this, or the passage on the Greek mythology 
in ' The Excursion.' Whichever he means, I am the 
last man to deny that it is beautiful, and especially if 
he means the latter. But it is no presumption to deny 
firmly Mr. Lander's assertion, that these are ' the best 
verses Wordsworth ever wrote.' Bless the man ! 

* There are a thousand such elsewhere. 
As worthy of your wonder : ' — 

Elsewhere, I mean, in Wordsworth's poems. In reality 
it is impossible that these should be the best ; for even 
if, in the executive part, they were so, which is not the 
case, the very nature of the thought, of the feeling, 
and of the relation, which binds it to the general 
theme, and the nature of that theme itself, forbid the 
possibility of merits so high. The whole movement 
of the feeling is fanciful : it neither appeals to what is 
deepest in human sensibilities, nor is meant to do so. 
The result, indeed, serves only to show Mr. Landor's 
slender acquaintance with Wordsworth. And what is 
worse than being slenderly acquainted, he is errone- 
ously acquainted even with these two short breathings 
from the Wordsworthian shell. He mistakes the logic. 
Wordsworth does not celebrate any power at all in 
Paganism. Old Triton indeed! he's little better, in 
respect of the terrific, than a mail-coach guard, nor 
half as good, if you allow the guard his official seat, a 
coal-black night, lamps blazing back upon his royal 
scarlet, and his blunderbuss correctly slung. Triton 
would not stay, I engage, for a second look at the old 
Portsmouth mail, as once I knew it. But, alas ! bcitter 
things than ever stood on Triton's pins are now as little 
able to stand up for themselves, or to startle the silent 



MILTON VS. SOXJTHEY AND LANDOR. 205 

fields in darkness, with the sudden flash of their 
glory — gone before it had full come — as Triton is to 
play the Freyschiitz chorus on his humbug of a horn. 
But the logic of Wordsworth is this — not that the 
Greek mythology is potent; on the contrary, that it 
is weaker than cowslip tea, and would not agitate 
the nerves of a hen sparrow ; but that, weak as it is — 
nay, by means of that very weakness — it does but the 
better serve to measure the weakness of something 
which he thinks yet weaker — viz. the death-like torpor 
of London society in 1808, benumbed by conventional 
apathy and worldliness — 

• Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.' 

This seems a digression from Milton, who is prop- 
erly the subject of this colloquy. But, luckily, it is 
not one of my sins. Mr. Landor is lord within the 
house of his own book ; he pays all accounts what- 
ever ; and readers that have either a bill, or bill of ex- 
ceptions, to tender against the concern, must draw 
upon him. To Milton he returns upon a very dangerous 
topic indeed — viz. the structure of his blank verse. 
1 know of none that is so trying to a wary man's 
nerves. You might as well tax Mozart with harshness 
in the divinest passages of ' Don Giovanni,' as Milton 
with any such offence against metrical science. Be 
assured, it is yourself that do not read with understand- 
ing, not Milton that by possibility can be found deaf to 
the demands of perfect harmony. You are tempted, 
after walking round a line threescore times, to exclaim 
at last — 'Well, if the Fiend himself should rise up 
before me at this very moment, in this very study of 
mine, and say that no screw was loose in that line. 



206 MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 

then would I reply — 'Sir, with submission, yoa 

are .' ' What ! ' suppose the Fiend suddenly to 

demand in thunder ; ' what am I ? ' ' Horribly wrong,' 
you wish exceedingly to say ; but, recollecting that 
some people are choleric in argument, you confine 
yourself to the polite answer — 'That, with deference 
to his better education, you conceive him to lie ; ' — 
that's a bad word to drop your voice upon in talking 
with a fiend, and you hasten to add — under a slight, a 
very slight mistake.' Ay, you might venture on that 
opinion with a fiend. But how if an angel should 
undertake the case ? And angelic was the ear of Mil- 
ton. Many are the prima facie anomalous lines in 
Milton ; many are the suspicious lines, which in many 
a book I have seen many a critic peering into, with 
eyes made up for mischief, yet with a misgiving that 
all was not quite safe, very much like an old raven 
looking down a marrow-bone. In fact, such is the 
metrical skill of the man, and such the perfection of 
his metrical sensibility, that, on any attempt to take 
liberties with a passage of his, you feel as when 
coming, in a forest, upon what seems a dead lion ; 
perhaps he may not be dead, but only sleeping ; nay, 
perhaps he may not be sleeping, but only shamming. 
And you have a jealousy, as to Milton, even in the 
most flagrant case of almost palpable error, that, after 
all, there may be a plot in it. You may be put down 
with shame by some man reading the line otherwise, 
reading it with a different emphasis, a different caesura, 
or perhaps a different suspension of the voice, so as to 
bring out a new and self-justifying effect. It must be 
added, that, in reviewing Milton's metre, it is quite 
necessary to have such books as ' Nare's English 



MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDON. 201 

Orthoepy' {in a late edition), and others of that class, 
lying on the table ; because the accentuation of Mil- 
ton's age was, in many words, entirely different from 
ours. And Mr. Landor is not free from some sus- 
picion of inattention as to this point. Over and above 
this accentual difference, the practice of our elder 
dramatists in the resolution of the final tion (which 
now is uniformly pronounced sJion), will be found ex- 
ceedingly important to the appreciation of a writer's 
verse. Contribution, which now is necessarily pro- 
nounced as a word of four syllables, would then, in 
verse, have five, being read into con-tri-hu-ce-on. 
Many readers will recollect another word, which for 
years brought John Kemble into hot water with the pit 
of Drury Lane. It was the plural of the word ache. 
This is generally made a dissyllable by the Elizabethan 
dramatists ; it occurs in the ' Tempest.' Prospero 
says — 

• I '11 fill thy bones ■with aches.' 

What follows, which I do not remember literatim, is 
such metrically as to require two syllables for aches. 
But how, then, was this to be pronounced ? Kemble 
thought akies would sound ludicrous ; aitches therefore 
he called it : and always the pit howled like a famished 
menagerie, as they did also when he chose (and he 
constantly chose) to pronounce beard like bird. Many 
of these niceties must be known, before a critic can 
ever allow himself to believe that he is right in obelizing, 
or in marking with so much as a ? any verse whatever 
of Milton's. And there are some of these niceties, I 
am satisfied, not even yet fully investigated. 

It is, however, to be borne in mind, after all allow- 



208 MILTON VS. SOUTHET AND LANDOE. 

ances and provisional reservations have been made, 
that Bentley's hypothesis (injudiciously as it was 
managed by that great scholar) has really a truth of 
fact to stand upon. Not only must Milton have com- 
posed his three greatest poems, the two ' Paradises ' 
and the ' Samson,' in a state of blindness — but sub- 
sequently, in the correction of the proofs, he must have 
suffered still more from this conflict with darkness, 
and, consequently, from this dependence upon care- 
less readers. This is Bentley's case : as lawyers say, 
' My lord, that is my case.' It is possible enough to 
write correctly in the dark, as I myself often do, when 
losing or missing my lucifers — which, like some elder 
lucifers, are always rebelliously straying into places 
where they can have no business. But it is quite im- 
possible to correct a proof in the dark. At least, if 
there is such an art, it must be a section of the black 
art. Bentley gained from. Pope that admirable epithet 
of slashing, [Hhe ribialds — from slashing Bentley 
down to piddling Theobalds,^ i. e, Tibhalds as it was 
pronounced], altogether from his edition of the 'Para- 
dise Lost.' This the doctor founded on his own 
hypothesis as to the advantage taken of Milton's blind- 
ness ; and corresponding was the havoc which he 
made of the text. In fact, on the really just allegation 
that Milton must have used the services of an amanu- 
ensis ; and the plausible one that this amanuensis, 
being often weary of his task, would be likely to neg- 
lect punctilious accuracy ; and the most improbable 
allegation that this weary person would also be veiy 
conceited, and add much rubbish of his own ; Bentley 
resigned himself luxuriously, without the whisper of a 
scruple, to his own sense of what was or was no^ 



MILTON VS. SOTTTHEY AND LANDOR. 209 

poetic, which sense happened to be that of the adder 
for music. The deaf adder heareth not though the 
musician charm ever so wisely. No scholarship, 
which so far beyond other men Bentley had, could 
gain him the imaginative sensibility which, in a degree 
so far beyond average men, he wanted. Consequently 
the world never before beheld such a scene of mas- 
sacre as his ' Paradise Lost ' exhibited. He laid him- 
self down to his work of extermination like th<s 
brawniest of reapers going in steadily with his sickle, 
coat stripped off, and shirt sleeves tucked up, to deal 
with an acre of barley. One duty, and no other, 
rested upon his conscience ; one voice he heard — 
Slash away, and hew down the rotten growths of this 
abominable amanuensis. The carnage was like that 
after a pitched battle. The very finest passages in 
every book of the poem were marked by italics, as 
dedicated to fire and slaughter. ' Slashing Dick ' went 
through the whole forest, like a woodman marking 
with white paint the giant trees that must all come down 
in a month or so. And one naturally reverts to a 
passage in the poem itself, where God the Father is 
supposed to say to his Filial assessor on the heavenly 
throne, when marking the desolating progress of Sin 
and Death, — 

' See with what havoc these fell dogs advance 
To ravage this fair world.' 

But still this inhuman extravagance of Bentley, in 
foUowmg out his hypothesis, does not exonerate us 
from bearing in mind so much truth as that hypothesis 
really must have had, from the pitiable difficulties of 
the great poet's situation. 
18 



210 MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 

My own opinion, therefore, upon the line, for in- 
stance, from 'Paradise Regained,' which Mr. Landor 
appears to have indicated for the reader's amaze- 
ment, viz. : — 

' As well miglit recommend 
Such solitude before choicest society,' 

is — that it escaped revision from some accident call- 
ing off the ear of Milton whilst in the act of having the 
proof read to him. Mr. Landor silently prints it in 
italics, without assigning his objection ; but, of course, 
that objection must be — that the line has one foot too 
much. It is an Alexandrine, such as Dryden scat- 
tered so profusely, without asking himself why ; but 
which Milton never tolerates except in the choruses 
of the Samson. 

' JVbt difficult, if thou hearken to me' — 

is one of the lines which Mr. Landor thinks that ' no 
authority will reconcile' to our ears. I think other- 
wise. The caesura is meant to fall not with the comma 
after difficult, but after thou ; and there is a most 
effective and grand suspension intended. It is Satan 
who speaks — Satan in the wilderness ; and he marks, 
as he wishes to mark, the tremendous opposition of 
attitude between the two parties to the temptation. 

* Not difficult if thou ' 

there let the reader pause, as if pulling up suddenly 
four horses in harness, and throwing them on their 
haunches — not difficult if thou (in some mysterious 
eense the son of God) ; and then, as with a burst of 
thunder, again giving the reins to your quadriga, 
* hearken to me : ' 



MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 211 

that is, to mc, that am the Prince of the Air, and able 
to perform all my promises for those that hearken to 
my temptations. 

Two lines are cited under the same ban of irrecon- 
cilability to our ears, but on a very different plea. 
The first of these lines is — 

• Launcelot, or Pellias, or Pellinore ; ' 
The other 

' Quintius, Fdbricius, Curius, Regulus.' 

The reader will readily suppose that both are objected 
to as ' roll-calls of proper names.' Now, it is very 
true that nothing is more offensive to the mind than 
the practice of mechanically packing into metrical 
successions, as if packing a portmanteau, names with- 
out meaning or significance to the feelings. No man 
ever carried that atrocity so far as Boileau, a fact of 
which Mr. Landor is well aware ; and slight is the 
sanction or excuse that can be drawn from him. But 
it must not be forgotten that Virgil, so scrupulous in 
finish of composition, committed this fault. I remem- 
ber a passage ending 

' NoSmonaque Prytaninque ; ' 

but, having no Virgil within reach, I cannot at this 
moment quote it accurately. Homer, with more ex- 
cuse, however, from the rudeness of his age, is a 
deadly offender in this way. But the cases from Mil- 
ton are very different. Milton was incapable of the 
Homeric or Virgilian blemish. The objection to such 
rolling musketry of names is, that unless interspersed 
with epithets, or broken into irregular groups by brief 
■tircumstances of parentage, country, or romantic inci* 



212 MILTON VS. SOITTHEY AND LANDOR. 

dent, they stand audaciously perking up their heads 
like lots in a catalogue, arrow-headed palisades, or 
young larches in a nursery ground, all occupying the 
same space, all drawn up in line, all mere iterations 
of each other. But in 

' Quintius, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus,' 

though certainly not a good line when insulated, 
(better, however, in its connection with the entire suc- 
cession of which it forms part), the apology is, that the 
massy weight of the separate characters enables them 
to stand like granite pillars or pyramids, proud of their 
self-supporting independency. 

Mr. Land or makes one correction by a simple im- 
provement in the punctuation, which has a very fine 
effect. Rarely has so large a result been distributed 
through a sentence by so slight a change. It is in the 
' Samson.' Samson says, speaking of himself (as 
elsewhere) with that profound pathos, which to all 
hearts invests Milton's own situation in the days of his 
old age, when he was composing that drama — 

' Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him 
Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves.' 

Thus it is usually printed ; that is, without a comma in 
the latter 'ine ; but, says Landor, ' there ought to be 
commas after eyeless, after Gaza, after mill.'' And 
why ? because thus ' the grief of Samson is aggravated 
at every member of the sentence.' He (like Milton) 
was — 1. bimd ; 2. in a city of triumphant enemies; 
3. working for daily bread ; 4. herding with slaves ; 
Samson literally, and Milton with those whom politi- 
cally he regarded as such. 

Mr. Landor is perfectly wrong, I must take the 



f 
i 



MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOE. 213 

liberty of saying, when he demurs to the line in 
' Paradise Regained : ' 

' From that placid aspect and meek regard,' 

on the ground that ' meek regard conveys no new idea 
to placid aspect.'' But aspect is the countenance of 
Christ when passive to the gaze of others : regard is 
the same countenance in active contemplation of those 
others whom he loves or pities. The placid aspect 
expresses, therefore, the divine rest ; the meek regard 
expresses the divine benignity : the one is the self- 
absorption of the total Godhead, the other the eternal 
emanation of the Filial Godhead. 

' By what ingenuity,' says Landor, ' can we erect 
into a verse — 

" In the bosom of bliss, and light of light ? " ' 

Now really it is by my" watch exactly three minutes 
too late for him to make that objection. The court 
cannot receive it now ; for the line just this moment 
cited, the ink being hardly yet dry, is of the same 
identical structure. The usual iambic flow is disturbed 
in both hnes by the very same ripple, viz., a trochee 
in the second foot, placid in the one line, bosom in the 
other. They are a sort of snags, such as lie in the 
current of the Mississippi. There they do nothing but 
mischief. Here, when the lines are read in their 
entire nexus, the disturbance stretches forwards and 
backwards with good effect on the music. Besides, if 
it did not, one is willing to take a snag from Milton, 
bu» one does not altogether like, being snagged by the 
Mi isissippi. One sees no particular reason for bearing 
*t. if one only knew how to be revenged on a river. 
But, of these metrical skirmishes, though full of 



214 MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOK. 

importance to the impassioned text of a great poet 
(for mysterious is the life that connects all modes 
of passion with rhythmus), let us suppose the casual 
reader to have had enough. And now at closing for 
the sake of change, let us treat him to a harlequin 
trick upon another theme. Did the reader ever happen 
to see a sheriff's officer arresting an honest gentle- 
man, who was doing no manner of harm to gentle or 
simple, and immediately afterwards a second sheriff's 
officer arresting the first — by which means that 
second officer merits for himself a place in history ; 
for at the same moment he liberates a deserving 
creature (since an arrested officer cannot possibly bag 
his prisoner), and he also avenges the insult put upon 
that worthy man? Perhaps the reader did not evei 
see such a sight ; and, growing personal, he asks me, 
in return, if I ever saw it. To say the truth, I never 
did ; except once, in a too-flattering dream ; and 
though I applauded so loudly as even to waken myself, 
and shouted ' encore,'' yet all went for nothing ; and I 
am still waiting for that splendid exemplification of 
retributive justice. But why ? Why should it be a 
spectacle so uncommon ? For surely those official 
arresters of men must want arresting at times as well 
as better people. At least, however, en attendant one 
may luxuriate in the vision of such a thing ; and the 
reader shall now see such a vision rehearsed. He 
shall see Mr. Landor arresting Milton — Milton, of all 
men ! — for a flaw in his Roman erudition ; and then 
he shall see me instantly stepping up, tapping Mr. 
Landor on the shoulder, and saying, ' Officer, you're 
wantftd ; ' whilst to Milton I say, touching my hat, 
'Now, sir, be off; ru© for your life, whilst I hold 



MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOH. 215 

this man in custody, lest he should fasten on you 
again.' 

What Milton had said, speaking of the ' watchful 
cherubim,' was — 

• Four faces each 
Had, like a double Janus ; ' 

Upon which Southey — but, of course, Landor, ven- 
triloquizing through Southey — says, ' Better left this 
to the imagination : double Januses are queer figures.' 
Not at all. On the contrary, they became so common, 
that finally there were no other. Rome, in her days 
of childhood, contented herself with a two-faced 
Janus ; but, about the time of the first or second 
Caesar, a very ancient statue of Janus was exhumed, 
which had four faces. Ever afterwards, this sacred 
resurgent statue became the model for any possible 
Janus that could show himself in good company. The 
quadrifrons Janus was now the orthodox Janus ; and 
it would have been as much a sacrilege to rob him of 
any single face as to rob a king's statue * of its horse. 
One thing may recall this to Mr. Lander's memory. I 
think it was Nero, but certainly it was one of the first 
six Caesars, that built, or that finished, a magnificent 
temple to Janus ; and each face was so managed as 
to point down an avenue leading to a separate market- 
place. Now, that there were four market-places, I 

* A king^s statue : — Till very lately the etiquette of Europe 
"was, that none but royal persons could have equestrian statues. 
Lord Ilopetoun, the reader will object, is allowed to have ahorse, 
in St. Andrew's Square, Edinburgh. True, but observe that he 
is not allowed to mount him. The first person, so far as I re- 
member, that, not being royal, has, in our island, seated himself 
oomfortably in the saddle, is the Duke of Wellington. 



216 MILTON VS. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. 

will make oath before any Justice of the Peace. One 
was called the Forum Julium, one the Forum Angus- 
tum, a third the Forum Transitorium : what the 
fourth was called is best known to itself, for really I 
forget. But if anybody says that perhaps it was 
called the Forum Landorium, I am not the man to 
object ; for few names have deserved such an honor 
more, whether from those that then looked forward into 
futurity with one face, or from our posterity that will 
look back into the vanishing past with another. 



FALSIFICATION OF ENGLISH HISTORY. 



I AM myself, and always have been, a member of 
the Church of England, and am grieved to hear the 
many attacks against the Church [frequently most 
illiberal attacks], which not so much religion as politi- 
cal rancor gives birth to in every third journal that I 
take up. This I say to acquit myself of all dishonor- 
able feelings, such as I would abhor to co-operate with, 
in bringing a very heavy charge against that great 
body in its literary capacity. Whosoever has reflected 
on the history of the English constitution — must be 
aware that the most important stage of its develop- 
ment lies within the reign of Charles I. It is true that 
the judicial execution of that prince has been allowed 
by many persons to vitiate all that was done by the 
heroic parliament of November, 1640 : and the ordi- 
nary histories of England assume as a matter of course 
that the whole period of parliamentary history through 
those times is to be regarded as a period of confusion. 
Our constitution, say they, was formed in 1688-9. 
Meantime it is evident to any reflecting man that the 
revolution simply re-affirmed the principles developed 
in the strife between the two great parties which had 
arisen in the reign of James I., and had ripened and 
19 [217J 



218 FALSIFICATION OF 

come to issue with each other in the reign of his son. 
Our constitution was not a birth of a single instant, as 
they would represent it, but a gradual growth and 
development through a long tract of time. In par- 
ticular the doctrine of the king's vicarious responsi- 
bility in the person of his ministers, which first gave 
a sane and salutary meaning to the doctrine of the 
king's personal irresponsibility [' The king can do no 
wrong'], arose undeniably between 1640 and 1648. 
This doctrine is the main pillar of our constitution, and 
perhaps the finest discovery that was ever made in the 
theory of government. Hitherto the doctrine that the 
King can do no wrong had been used not to protect 
the indispensable sanctity of the king's constitutional 
character, but to protect the wrong. Used in this way, 
it was a maxim of Oriental despotism, and fit only for 
a nation where law had no empire. Many of the 
illustrious patriots of the Great Parliament saw this ; 
and felt the necessity of abolishing a maxim so fatal to 
the just liberties of the people. But some of them fell 
into the opposite error of supposing that this abolition 
could be effected only by the direct negation of it ; 
their maxim accordingly was — ' The king can do 
wrong,' i. e. is responsible in his own person. In this 
great error even the illustrious wife of Colonel Hutchin- 
son participated ; ^ and accordingly she taxes those of 
her own party who scrupled to accede to the new 
maxim, and still adhered to the old one, with uncon- 
scientious dealing. But she misapprehended their 
meaning, and failed to see where they laid the em- 
phasis : the emphasis was not laid, as it was by the 
royal party, on the words ' can do no wrong ' — but 
on ' The king : ' that is, wrong may be done ; and in 



ENGLISH HISTORY. 219 

the king's name ; but it cannot be the king who did it 
[the king cannot constitutionally be supposed the per- 
son who did it]. By this exquisite political refinement, 
the old tyrannical maxim was disarmed of its sting; 
and the entire redress of all wrong, so indispensable to 
the popular liberty, was brought into perfect recon- 
ciliation with the entire inviolability of the sovereign, 
which is no less indispensable to the popular liberty. 
There is moreover a double wisdom in the new sense : 
for not only is one object [the redress of wrong] 
secured in conjunction with another object [the king's 
inviolability] hitherto held irreconcilable, — but even 
with a view to the first object alone a much more 
effectual means is applied, because one which leads to 
no schism in the state, than could have been applied 
by the blank negation of the maxim ; i. e. by lodging 
the responsibility exactly where the executive power 
[ergo the power of resisting this responsibility] was 
lodged. Here then is one example in illustration of 
my thesis — that the English constitution was in a 
great measure gradually evolved in the contest be- 
tween the different parties in the reign of Charles I. 
Now, if this be so, it follows that for constitutional 
history no period is so important as that : and indeed, 
though it is true that the Revolution is the great era 
for the constitutional historian, because he there first 
finds the constitution fully developed as the ' bright 
consummate Jlower,'' and what is equally important he 
there first finds the principles of our constitution 
ratified by a competent authority, — yet, to trace the 
root and growth of the constitution, the three reigns 
immediately preceding are still more properly the 
objects of his study. In proportion then as the reign 



220 FALSIFICATION OF 

of Charles I. is important to the history of our con- 
stitution, in that proportion are those to be taxed with 
the most dangerous of all possible falsifications of our 
history, who have misrepresented either the facts or 
the principles of those times. Now I affirm that the 
clergy of the Church of England have been m a per- 
petual conspiracy since the era of the restoration to 
misrepresent both. As an illustration of what I mean 
I refer to the common edition of Hudibras by Dr. 
Grey : for the proof I might refer to some thousands 
of books. Dr. Grey's is a disgusting case : for he 
swallowed with the most anile credulity every story, 
the most extravagant that the malice of those times 
could invent against either the Presbyterians or the 
Independents : and for this I suppose amongst other 
deformities his notes were deservedly ridiculed by 
Warburton. But, amongst hundreds of illustrations 
more respectable than Dr. Grey's I will refer the 
reader to a work of our own days, the Ecclesiastical 
Biography [in part a republication of Walton's Lives] 
edited by the present master of Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge, who is held in the highest esteem wherever he 
is known, and is I am persuaded perfectly conscientious 
and as impartial as in such a case it is possible for a 
high churchman to be. Yet so it is that there is 
scarcely one of the notes having any political reference 
to the period of 1640-1660, which is not disfigured 
by unjust prejudices : and the amount of the moral 
which the learned editor grounds upon the documents 
before him — is this, that the young student is to 
cherish the deepest abhorrence and contempt of all 
who had any share on the parliamentary side in the 
* confusions ' of the period from 1640 to 1660 : that is 



ENGLISH HISTORY. 22* 

to say of men to whose immortal exertions it waa 
owing tliat tlic very revolution of 1688, which Dr. W. 
wi\[ be the first to applaud, found us with any such 
stock of political principles or feelings as could make a 
beneficial revolution possible. Where, let me ask, 
would have been the willingness of some Tories to 
construe the flight of James II. into a virtual act of ab- 
dication, or to consider even the most formal act of 
abdication binding against the king, — had not the great 
struggle of Charles's days gradually substituted in the 
minds of all parties a rational veneration of the king's 
office for the old superstition in behalf of the king's 
person, which would have protected him from the 
effects of any acts however solemnly performed which 
affected injuriously either his own interests or the 
liberties of his people. Tempora mutantur : nos et 
mutamur in illis. Those whom we find in fierce op- 
position to the popular party about 1640 we find still 
in the same personal opposition fifty years after, but 
an opposition resting on far different principles : in- 
sensibly the principles of their antagonists had reached 
even them : and a courtier of 1689 was willing to con- 
cede more than a patriot of 1630 would have ventured 
to ask. Let me not be understood to mean that true 
patriotism is at all more shown in supporting the rights 
of the people than those of the king : as soon as both 
are defined and limited, the last are as indispensable to 
the integrity of the constitution — as the first: and 
popular freedom itself would suffer as much, though 
indirectly, from an invasion of Caesar's rights — as by 
a more direct attack on itself. But in the 17th century 
the rights of the people were as yet not defined : 
throughout that century they were gradually defining 



222 FALSIFICATION OF 

themselves — and, as happiness to all yreat practical 
interests, defining themselves through a course of 
fierce and bloody contests. For the kingly rights 
are almost inevitably carried too high m ages of im- 
perfect civilization : and the well-known laws of Henry 
the Seventh, by which he either broke or gradually 
sapped the power of the aristocracy, had still more 
extravagantly exalted them. On this account it is just 
to look upon democratic or popular politics as identical 
in the 17th century with patriotic politics. In later 
periods, the democrat and the patriot have sometimes 
been in direct opposition to each other : at that period 
they were inevitably in conjunction. All this, how- 
ever, is in general overlooked by those who either 
write English history or comment upon it. Most 
writers of or upon English history proceed either upon 
servile principles, or upon no principles : and a good 
Spirit of English History^ that is, a history which 
should abstract the tendencies and main results [as 
to laws, manners, and constitution] from every age 
of English history, is a work which I hardly hope 
to see executed. For it would require the con- 
currence of some philosophy, with a great deal of 
impartiality. How idly do we say, in speaking of the 
events of our own time which affect our party feel- 
ings, — 'We stand too near to these events for an 
impartial estimate : we must leave them to the judg- 
ment of posterity ! ' For it is a fact that of the many 
books of memoirs written by persons who were not 
merely contemporary with the great civil war, but 
actors and even leaders in its principal scenes — there 
is hardly one which does not exhibit a more impartial 
picture of that great drama than the histories written at 



ENGLISH HISTOKY. 223 

this day. The historian of Popery does not display 
half so much zealotry and passionate prejudice in 
speaking of the many events which have affected the 
power and splendor of the Papal See for the last thirty 
years, and under his own eyes, as he does when 
speaking of a reformer who lived three centuries 
ago — of a translator of the Bible into a vernacular 
tongue who lived nearly five centuries ago — of an 
Auti-pope — of a Charlemagne or a Gregory the Great 
still further removed from himself. The recent events 
he looks upon as accidental and unessential : but in 
the great enemies, or great founders of the Romish 
temporal power, and in the history of their actions and 
their motives, he feels that the whole principle of the 
Romish cause and its pretensions are at stake. Pretty 
much under the same feeling have modern writers 
written with a rancorous party spirit of the political 
struggles in the 17th century : here they fancy that 
they can detect the incunabula of the revolutionaiy 
spirit : here some have been so sharpsighted as to read 
■he features of pure jacobinism: and others ^ have 
gone so far as to assert that all the atrocities of the 
French revolution had their direct parallelisms in acts 
done or countenanced by the virtuous and august 
Senate of England in 1640 ! Strange distortion of the 
understanding which can thus find a brotherly resem- 
blance between two great historical events, which of 
uU that ever were put on record stand off from each 
other in most irreconcilable enmity : the one originat- 
ing, as Mr. Coleridge has observed, in excess of prin- 
ciple ; the other in the utter defect of all moral principle 
whatever ; and the progress of each being answerable 
U its origin ! Yet so it is. And not a memoir-writer 



224 FALGIFICATION OF 

of that age is reprinted in this, but we have a prefacsts 
from some red-hot Anti-jacobin warning us with much 
vapid common-place from the mischiefs and eventual 
anarchy of too rash a spirit of reform as displayed in 
the French revolution — not by the example of that 
French revolution, but by that of our own in the age 
of Charles I. The following passage from the Intro- 
duction to Sir William Waller's Vindication published 
in 1793, may serve as a fair instance : ' He ' (Sir W. 
Waller) ' was, indeed, at length sensible of the misery 
which he had contributed to bring on his country ; ' 
(by the way, it is a suspicious circumstance — that Sir 
William 3 first became sensible that his country was 
miserable, when he became sensible that he himself 
was not likely to be again employed ; and became 
fully convinced of it, when his party lost their as- 
cendancy :) ' he was convinced, by fatal experience, 
that anarchy was a bad step towards a perfect govern- 
ment; that the subversion of every establishment was 
no safe foundation for a permanent and regular consti- 
tution : he found that pretences of reform were held 
up by the designing to dazzle the eyes of the unwary, 
&c. ; he found in short that reformation, by popular 
insurrection, must end in the destruction and cannot 
tend to the formation of a regular Government.' After 
a good deal more of this well-meaning cant, the Intro 
duction concludes with the following sentence : — the 
writer is addressing the reformers of 1793, amongst 
whom — ' both leaders and followers,' he says, ' may 
together reflect — that, upon speculative and visionary 
reformers,' {i. e. those of 1640) ' the severest punish- 
ment which God in his vengeance ever yet inflicted — ■ 
was to curse them with the complete gratification of 



ENGLISH HISTORY. 225 

their own inordinate desires.' I quote this passage — 
not as containing any thing singular, but for the very 
reason that it is 710^ singular : it expresses in fact the 
universal opinion : notwithstanding which I am happy 
to say that it is false. What ' complete gratification 
of their own desires ' was ever granted to the ' re- 
formers ' in question ? On the contrary, it is well 
known (and no book illustrates that particular fact so 
well as Sir William Waller's) that as early as 1647 
the army had too effectually subverted the just rela- 
tions between itself and parliament — not to have 
suggested fearful anticipations to all discerning patriots 
of that unhappy issue which did in reality blight their 
prospects. And, when I speak of an ' unhappy issue,' 
I would be understood only of the immediate issue : 
for the remote issue was — the revolution of 1688, as 
I have already asserted. Neither is it true that even 
the immediate issue was ' unhappy ' to any extent 
which can justify the ordinary language in which it is 
described. Here again is a world of delusions. We 
hear of ' anarchy,' of ' confusions,' of ' proscriptions,' 
of ' bloody and ferocious tyranny.' All is romance ; 
there was no anarchy ; no confusions ; no proscrip- 
tions ; no tyranny in the sense designed. The se- 
questrations, forfeitures, and punishments of all sorts 
which were inflicted by the conquering party on their 
antagonists — went on by due course of law; and the 
summary justice of courts martial was not resorted to 
in England : except for the short term of the two 
wars, and the brief intermediate campaign of 1648, 
the country was in a very tranquil state. Nobody was 
punished without an open trial ; and all trials pro- 
ceeded in the regular course, according to the ancient 



226 FALSIFICATION OF 

forms, and in the regular courts of justice. And as to 
* tyranny,' which is meant chiefly of the acts of Crom- 
well's government, it should be remembered that the 
Protectorate lasted not a quarter of the period in 
question ( 1640 - 1660) ; a fact which is constantly 
forgotten even by very eminent writers, who speak as 
though Cromwell had drawn his sword in January, 
1649 — cut off the king's head — instantly mounted 
his throne — and continued to play the tyrant for the 
whole remaining period of his life (nearly ten years). 
Secondly, as to the kind of tyranny which Cromwell 
exercised, the misconception is ludicrous : continental 
writers have a notion, well justified by the language 
of English writers, that Cromwell was a ferocious 
savage who built his palace of human skulls and deso- 
lated his country. Meantime, he was simply a strong- 
minded — rough-built Englishman, with a character 
thoroughly English, and exceedingly good-natured. 
Gray valued himself upon his critical knowledge of 
English history : yet how thoughtlessly does he ex- 
press the abstract of Cromwell's life in the line on the 
village Cromwell — 'Some Cromwell, guiltless of his 
country's blood ! ' How was Cromwell guilty of his 
country's blood ? What blood did he cause to be shed ? 
A great deal was shed no doubt in the wars (though less, 
by the way, than is imagined) : but in those Cromwell 
was but a servant of the parliament : and no one will 
allege that he had any hand in causing a single war. 
After he attained the sovereign power, no more do- 
mestic wars arose : and as to a few persons who were 
executed for plots and conspiracies against his person, 
they were condemned upon evidence openly given and 
by due course of law. With respect to the general 



ENGLISH HISTOBY. 227 

charactei* of his government, it is evident that in the 
unsettled and revolutionary state of things which fol- 
lows a civil war some critical cases will arise to de- 
mand an occasional ' vigor beyond the law ' — such' as 
the Roman government allowed of in the dictatorial 
power. But in general, Cromwell's government was 
limited by law : and no reign in that centuiy, prior to 
Ihe revolution, furnishes fewer instances of attempts to 
tamper with the laws — to overrule them — to twist 
them to private interpretations — or to dispense with 
them. As to his major-generals of counties, who 
figure in most histories of England as so many Ali 
Pachas that impaled a few prisoners eveiy morning 
before breakfast — or rather as so many ogres that ate 
up good christian men, women and children alive, 
they were disagreeable people who were disliked much 
in the same way as our commissioners of the income- 
tax were disliked in the memory of us all ; and heartily 
they would have laughed at the romantic and bloody 
masquerade in which they are made to figure in the 
English histories. What then was the ' tyranny ' of 
Cromwell's government, which is confessedly com- 
plained of even in those days ? The word ' tyranny ' 
was then applied not so much to the mode in which 
his power was administered (except by the pre- 
judiced) — as to its origin. However mercifully a 
man may reign, — yet, if he have no right to reign at 
all, we may in one sense call him a tyrant ; his power 
not being justly derived, and resting upon an unlawful 
(i. e. a military) basis. As a usurper, and one who 
had diverted the current of a grand national movement 
to selfish and personal objects, Cromwell was and will 
be called a tyrant ; but not in the more obvious sense 



228 FALSIFICAflON OF 

of the word. Such are the misleading statements 
which disfigure the History of England in its most im- 
portant chapter. They mislead by more than a simple 
error of fact : those, which I have noticed last, involve 
a moral anachronism ; for they convey images of 
cruelty and barbarism such as could not co-exist with 
the national civilization at that time ; and whosoever 
has not corrected this false picture by an acquaintance 
with the English literature of that age, must neces- 
sarily image to himself a state of society as rude and 
uncultured as that which prevailed during the wars of 
York and Lancaster — i. e. about two centuries earlier. 
But those, with which I introduced this article, are 
still worse ; because they involve an erroneous view 
of constitutional history, and a most comprehensive 
act of ingratitude : the great men of the Long Parlia- 
ment paid a heavy price for their efforts to purchase 
for their descendants a barrier to irresponsible power 
and security from the anarchy of undefined regal pre- 
rogative : in these efforts most of them made ship- 
wreck of their own tranquillity and peace ; that such 
sacrifices were made unavailingly (as it must have 
seemed to themselves), and that few of them lived to 
see the ' good old cause ' finally triumphant, does not 
cancel their claims upon our gratitude — but rather 
strengthen them by the degree in which it aggravated 
the difficulty of bearing such sacrifices with patience. 
But whence come these falsifications of history ? i 
believe, from two causes ; first (as I have already said) 
from the erroneous tone impressed upon the national 
history by the irritated spirit of the clergy of the 
established church : to the religious zealotry of those 
times — the church was the object of especial attack • 



ENGLISH HISTORY. 229 

nnd its members were naturally exposed to heavy suf- 
ferings : hence their successors are indisposed to find 
any good in a cause which could lead to such a result. 
It is their manifest right to sympathize with their own 
order in that day ; and in such a case it is almost tneir 
duty to be incapable of an entire impartiality. Mean- 
time they have carried this much too far : the literature 
of England must always be in a considerable pro- 
portion lodged in their hands ; and the extensive 
means thus placed at their disposal for injuriously 
coloring that important part of history they have used 
with no modesty or forbearance. There is not a page 
of the national history even in its local subdivisions 
which they have not stained with the atrabilious hue 
of their wounded remembrances : hardly a town io 
England, which stood a siege for the king or the par- 
liament, but has some printed memorial of its con- 
stancy and its sufferings ; and in nine cases out of ten 
the editor is a clergyman of the established church, 
who has contrived to deepen ' the sorrow of the time ' 
by the harshness of his commentary. Surely it is 
high time that the wounds of the 17th century should 
close ; that history should take a more commanding 
and philosophic station ; and that brotherly charity 
should now lead us to a saner view of constitutional 
politics ; or a saner view of politics to a more compre- 
hensive charity. The other cause of this falsification 
springs out of a selfishness which has less claim to 
any indulgence — viz. the timidity with which the 
English Whigs of former days and the party to whom 
Ihey"* succeeded, constantly shrank from acknowledg- 
ing any alliance with the great men of the Long Par- 
liament under the nervous horror of being confounded 



330 FALSIFICATION OF 

with the regicides of 1649. It was of such urgent 
importance to them, for any command over the public 
support, that they should acquit themselves of any 
sentiment of lurking toleration for regicide, with which 
their enemies never failed to load them, that no mode 
of abjuring it seemed sufficiently emphatic to them : 
hence it was that Addison, with a view to the interest 
of his party, thought fit when in Switzerland, to offer 
a puny insult to the memory of General Ludlow : 
hence it is that even in our own days, no writers have 
insulted Milton with so much bitterness and shameless 
irreverence as the Whigs ; though it is true that some 
few Whigs, more however in their literary than in 
their polhical character, have stepped forward in his 
vindication. At this moment I recollect a passage in 
the writings of a modern Whig bishop — in which, for 
the sake of creating a charge of falsehood against 
Milton, the author has grossly mis-translated a passage 
in the Defensio pro Pop. Anglicano : and, if that 
bishop were not dead, I would here take the liberty 
of rapping his knuckles — were it only for breaking 
Priscian's head. To return over to the clerical feud 
against the Long Parliament, — it was a passage in 
a very pleasing work of this day {Ecclesiastical Bi- 
ography) which suggested to me the whole of what I 
have now written. Its learned editor, who is incapable 
of uncandid feelings except in what concerns the in- 
terests of his order, has adopted the usual tone in 
regard to the men of 1640 throughout his otherwise 
valuable annotations: and somewhere or other (in the 
Life of Hammond, according to my remembrance) he 
has made a statement to this effect — That the custom 
prevalent among children in that age of asking their 



ENGLISH HISTORY. 231 

parents' blessing was probably first brought into disuse 
by the Puritans. Is it possible to imagine a perversity 
of prejudice more unreasonable ? The unamiable side 
of the patriotic character in the seventeenth century 
was unquestionably its religious bigotry ; which, how- 
ever, had its ground in a real fervor of religious feeling 
and a real strength of religious principle somewhat 
exceeding the ordinary standard of the 19th century. 
But, however palliated, their bigotry is not to be de- 
nied ; it was often offensive from its excess ; and 
ludicrous in its direction. Many harmless customs, 
many ceremonies and rituals that had a high positive 
value, their frantic intolerance quarrelled with : and 
for my part I heartily join in the sentiment of Charles 
II. — applying it as he did, but a good deal more ex- 
tensively, that their religion ' was not a religion for a 
gentleman : ' indeed all sectarianism, but especially 
that which has a modern origin — arising and growing 
up within our own memories, unsupported by a grand 
traditional history of persecutions — conflicts — and 
martyrdoms, lurking moreover in blind alleys, holes, 
corners, and tabernacles, must appear spurious and 
mean in the eyes of him who has been bred up in the 
grand classic forms of the Church of England or the 
Church of Rome. But, because the bigotry of the 
Puritans was excessive and revolting, is that a reason 
for fastening upon them all the stray evils of omission 
or commission for which no distinct fathers can be 
found ? The learned editor does not pretend that 
there is any positive evidence, or presumption even, 
for imputing to the Puritans a dislike to the custom in 
question : but, because he thinks it a good custom, his 
inference is that nobody could have abolished it but 



232 FALSIFICATION OF 

the Puritans. Now who does not see that, if this had 
been amongst the usages discountenanced by the Pu- 
ritans, it would on that account have been the more 
pertinaciously maintained by their enemies in church 
and state ? Or, even if this usage were of a nature to 
be prohibited by authority, as the public use of the 
liturgy — organs — surplices, &c., who does not see 
that with regard to that as well as to other Puritanical 
innovations there would have been a reflux of zeal at 
the restoration of the king which would have estab- 
lished them in more strength than ever ? But it is 
evident to the unprejudiced that the usage in question 
gradually went out in submission to the altered spirit 
of the times. It was one feature of a general system 
of manners, fitted by its piety and simplicity for a 
pious and simple age, and which therefore even the 
17th century had already outgrown. It is not to be 
inferred that filial affection and reverence have de- 
cayed amongst us, because they no longer express 
themselves in the same way. In an age of imperfect 
culture, all passions and emotions are in a more ele- 
mentary state — ' speak a plainer language ' — and 
express themselves externally : in such an age the 
frame and constitution of society is more picturesque ; 
the modes of life rest more undisguisedly upon the 
basis of the absolute and original relation of things : 
the son is considered in his sonship, the father in his 
fatherhood : and the manners take an appropriate 
coloring. Up to the middle of the 17th century there 
were many families in which the children never pre- 
sumed to sit down in their parents' presence. But with 
us, in an age of more complete intellectual culture, a 
thick disguise is spread over the naked foundations of 



ENGLISH HISTORY. 233 

human life ; and the instincts of good taste banish 
from good company the expression of all the pro- 
founder emotions. A son therefore, who should kneel 
down in this age to ask his papa's blessing on leaving 
town for Brighton or Bath — would be felt by himself 
to be making a theatrical display of filial duty, such 
as would be painful to him in proportion as his feel- 
ings were sincere. All this would have been evident 
to the learned editor in any case but one which re- 
garded the Puritans : they were at any rate to be 
molested : in default of any graver matter, a mere 
fanciful grievance is searched out. Still, however, 
nothing was effected ; fanciful or real, the grievance 
must be connected with the Puritans : here lies the 
offence, there lies the Puritans : it would be very 
agreeable to find some means of connecting the one 
with the other : but how shall this be done ? Why, in 
default of all other means, the learned editor assumes 
the connection. He leaves the reader with an im- 
pression that the Puritans are chargeable with a serious 
wound to the manners of the nation in a point affecting 
the most awful of the household charities : and he fails 
to perceive that for this whole charge his sole ground 
is — that it would be very agreeable to him if he had 
a ground. Such is the power of the esprit de corps to 
palliate and recommend as colorable the very weakest 
logic to a man of acknowledged learning and talent ! 
— In conclusion I must again disclaim any want of 
veneration and entire affection for the Established 
Church : the very prejudices and injustice, with which 
I tax the English clergy, have a generous origin : but 
it is right to point the attention of historical students to 
their strength and the effect which they have had. 
20 



234 FALSIFICATION OF 

They have been indulged to excess ; they have dis- 
figured the grandest page in English history ; they 
have hid the true descent and tradition of our constitu- 
tional history ; and, by impressing upon the literature 
of the country a false conception of the patriotic party 
in and out of Parliament, they have stood in the way 
of a great work, — a work which, according to my 
ideal of it, would be the most useful that could just 
now be dedicated to the English public — viz. a philo- 
sophic record of the revolutions of English History. 
The English Constitution, as proclaimed and ratified 
in 1688-9, is in its kind, the noblest work of the 
human mind working in conjunction with Time, and 
what in such a case we may allowably call Provi- 
dence. Of this chefd''oeuvre of human wisdom it were 
desirable that we should have a proportionable his- 
tory : for such a history the great positive qualification 
would be a philosophic mind : the great negative 
qualification would be this [which to the established 
clergy may now be recommended as a fit subject for 
their magnanimity] ; viz. complete conquest over those 
prejudices which have hitherto discolored the greatest 
era of patriotic virtue by contemplating the great men 
of that era under their least happy aspect — namely, in 
relation to the Established Church. 

Now that I am on the subject of English History, I 
will notice one of the thousand mis-statements of 
Hume's which becomes a memorable one from the 
stress which he has laid upon it, and from the manner 
and situation in which he has introduced it. Standing 
in the current of a narrative, it would have merited a 
silent correction in an unpretending note : but it occu- 
pies a much more assuming station ; for it is intro- 



ENGLISH HISTORY. 235 

ducecl in a philosophical essay ; and being relied on 
for a particular purpose with the most unqualified 
confidence, and being alleged in opposition to the very 
highest authority [viz. the authority of an eminent 
person contemporary with the fact] it must be looked 
on as involving a peremptory defiance to all succeed- 
ing critics who might hesitate between the authority 
of Mr. Hume at the distance of a century from the 
facts and Sir William Temple speaking to them as a 
matter within his personal recollections. Sir William 
Temple had represented himself as urging in a con- 
versation with Charles II., the hopelessness of any 
attempt on the part of an English king to make him- 
self a despotic and absolute monarch, except indeed 
through the affections of his people.^ This general 
thesis he had supported by a variety of arguments , 
and, amongst the rest, he had desci'ibed himself as 
urging this — that even Cromwell had been unable to 
establish himself in unlimited power, though supported 
by a military force of eighty thousand men. Upon 
this Hume calls the reader's attention to the extreme 
improbability which there must beforehand appear to 
be in supposing that Sir W. Temple, — speaking of so 
recent a case, with so much official knowledge of that 
case at his command, uncontradicted moreover by the 
king whose side in the argument gave him an interest 
in contradicting Sir William's statement, and whose 
means of information were paramount to those of all 
others, — could under these circumstances be mis- 
taken. Doubtless, the reader will reply to Mr, Hume, 
the improbability is extreme, and scarcely to be in 
validated by any possible authority — which, at best, 
must terminate in leaving an equilibrium of opposing 



236 FALSIFICATION OF 

evidence. And yet, says Mr. Hume, Sir William was 
unquestionably wrong, and grossly wrong: Cromwer 
never had an army at all approaching to the number 
of eighty thousand. Now here is a sufficient proof 
that Hume had never read Lord Clarendon's account 
of his own life : this book is not so common as his 
' History of the Rebellion ; ' and Hume had either not 
met with it, or had neglected it. For, in the early 
part of this work, Lord Clarendon, speaking of the 
army which was assembled on Blackheath to welcome 
the return of Charles II., says that it amounted to fifty 
thousand men : and, when it is remembered that this 
army was exclusive of the troops in garrison — of the 
forces left by Monk in the North — and above all of 
the entire army in Ireland, — it cannot be doubted that 
the whole would amount to the number stated by Sir 
William Temple. Indeed Charles II. himself, in the 
year 1678 [i. e. about four years after this conversa- 
tion] as Sir W. Temple elsewhere tells us, ' in six 
weeks' time raised an army of twenty thousand men, 
the completest — and in all appearance the bravest 
troops that could be any where seen, and might have 
raised many more ; and it was confessed by all the 
Foreign Ministers that no king in Christendom could 
have made and completed such a levy as this ap- 
peared in such a time.' William III. again, about 
eleven years afterwards, raised twenty-three regiments 
with the same ease and in the same space of six 
weeks. It may be objected indeed to such cases, as 
in fact it was objected to the case of William III. by 
Hewlett in his sensible Examination of Dr. Price's 
Essay on the Population of England, that, in an age 
when manufactures were so little extended, it could 



ENGLISH HISTORY. 237 

never have been difficult to make such a levy of men — 
provided there were funds for paying and equipping 
them. But, considering the extraordinary funds which 
were disposable for this purpose in Ireland, dec. during 
the period of Cromwell's Protectorate, we may very 
safely allow the combined authority of Sir William 
Temple — of the king — and of that very prime 
minister who disbanded Cromwell's army, to outweigh 
the single authority of Hume at the distance of a cen- 
tury from the facts. Upon any question of fact, indeed, 
Hume's authority .s none at all. 



NOTES. 



Note 1, Page 218. 

This is remarked by her editor and descendant Julias Hutch- 
inson, -who adds some words to this effect — ' that if the patriots 
of that day were the inventors of the maxim [ The king can do 
no wrong'], yfQ are much indebted to them.' The patriots cer- 
tainly did not invent the maxim, for they found it already cur- 
rent : but they gave it its new and constitutional sense. I refer to 
the book, however, as I do to almost all books in these notes, from 
memory ; writing most of them in situations where I have no 
access to books. By the way, Charles I., who used the maxim in 
the most odious sense, furnished the most colorable excuse for 
his own execution. He constantly maintained the irresponsi- 
bility of his ministers : but, if that were conceded, it would then 
follow that the king must be made responsible in his own 
person : — and that construction led of necessity to his trial and 
death. 

Note 2. Page 223. 

Amongst these Mr. D'Israeli in one of the latter volumes of 
his ' Curiosities of Literature ' has dedicated a chapter or so to a 
formal proof of this proposition. A reader who is familiar with 
the history of that age comes to the chapter with a previous in- 
dignation, knowing what sort of proof he has to expect. This 
indignation is not likely to be mitigated by what he will there 
find Because some one madman, fool, or scoundrel makes a 
monstrous proposal — which dies of itself unsupported, and is in 
violent contrast to all the acts and the temper of those times, — 
[238] 



NOTES. 239 

this is to sally the character of the parliament and three-fourths 
of the pcoiDle of England. If this proposal had grown out of the 
spirit of the age, that spirit would have produced many moi-e 
proposals of the same character and acts corresponding to them. 
Yet upon this one infamous proposal, and two or three scandalous 
anecdotes from the libels of the day, does the whole onus of Mr. 
D'Israeli's parallel depend. Tantamne rem tarn negligenter? — 
In the general character of an Englishman I have a right to 
complain that so heavy an attack upon the honor of England and 
her most virtuous patriots in her most virtuous age should be 
made with so much levity : a charge so solemn in its matter 
should have been prosecuted with a proportionate solemnity cf 
manner. Mr. D'Israeli refers with just applause to the opinions 
of Mr. Coleridge : I wish that he would have allowed a little 
more weight to the striking passage in which that gentleman 
contrasts the French revolution with the English revolution of 
1640 - 8. However, the general tone of honor and upright prin- 
ciple, which max'ks Mr. D'Israeli's work, encourages me and 
others to hope that he will cancel the chapter — and not persist 
in wounding the honor of a great people for the sake of a paral • 
lelism, which — even if it were true — is a thousand times too 
Blight and feebly supported to satisfy the most accommodating 
reader. 

Note 3. Page 224. 

Sir William and his cousin Sir Hardress Waller, were both 
remarkable men. Sir Hardress had no conscience at all ; Sir 
William a very scrupulous one ; which, however, he was for ever 
tampering with — and generally succeeded in reducing into 
compliance with his immediate interest. He was, however, an 
accomplished gentleman : and as a man of talents worthy of the 
highest admiration. 

Note 4. Page 229. 

Until after the year 1G88, I do not remember ever to have 
found the term Whig applied except to the religious character- 
istics of that party : whatever reference it might have to their 
political distinctions was only secondary and by implication. 



240 NOTES. 

Note 5. Page 235. 

Sir William had quoted to Charles a saying from Gourville (a 
Frenchman whom the king esteemed, and whom Sir William 
himself considered the only foreigner he had ever known that 
understood England) to this effect: 'That a king of England, 
who will be the man of his people, is the greatest king in 
the world ; but, if he will be something more, by G — he is 
nothing at all.' 



A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 

He was a man of very extraordinary genius. He 
has generally been treated by those who have spokeu 
of him in print as a madman. But this is a mistake 
and must have been founded chiefly on the titles ol 
his books. He was a man of fervid mind and of sub 
lime aspirations : but he was no madman ; or, if he 
was, then I say that it is so far desirable to be a mad- 
man. In 1798 or 1799, when I must have been about 
thirteen years old. Walking Stewart was in Bath — 
where my family at that time resided. He frequented 
the pump-room, and I believe all public places — 
walking up and down, and dispersing his philosophic 
opinions to the right and the left, like a Grecian philos- 
opher. The first time I saw him was at a concert in 
the Upper Rooms ; he was pointed out to me by one 
of my party as a very eccentric man who had walked 
over the habitable globe. I remember that Madame 
Mara was at that moment singing : and Walking 
Stewart, who was a true lover of music (as I after- 
wards came to know), was hanging upon her notes 
like a bee upon a jessamine flower. His countenance 
was striking, and expressed the union of benignity 
with philosophic habits of thought. In such health 
had his pedestrian exercises preserved him, connected 
21 [2411 



242 A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER, 

with his abstemious mode of living, that though he 
must at that time have been considerably above forty, 
he did not look older than twenty-eight ; at least the 
face which lemained upon my recollection for some 
years was that of a young man. Nearly ten years 
afterwards I became acquainted with him. During 
the interval I had picked up one of his works in 
Bristol, — viz. his Travels to discover the Source of 
Moral Motion^ the second volume of which is entitled 
The Apocalypse of Nature. I had been greatly im- 
pressed by the sound and original views which in the 
first volume he had taken of the national characters 
throughout Europe. In particular he was the first, 
and so far as I know the only writer who had noticed 
the profound error of ascribing a phlegmatic character 
to the English nation. ' English phlegm ' is the con- 
stant expression of authors when contrasting the English 
with the French. Now the truth is, that, beyond that 
of all other nations, it has a substratum of profound 
passion : and, if we are to recur to the old doctrine of 
temperaments, the English character must be classed 
not under the phlegmatic but under the melancholic 
temperament ; and the French under the sanguine. 
The character of a nation may be judged of in this 
particular by examining its idiomatic language. The 
French, in whom the lower forms of passion are con- 
stantly bubbling up from the shallow and superficial 
character of their feelings, have appropriated all the 
phrases of passion to the service of trivial and ordi- 
nary life : and hence they have no language of passion 
for the service of poetry or of occasions really de- 
manding it : for it has been already enfeebled by 
continual association with cases of an unimpassioned 



I 



A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 243 

order. But a character of deeper passion has a per- 
petual standard in itself, by which as by an instinct it 
l/ics all cases, and rejects the language of passion as 
disproportionate and ludicrous where it is not fully 
justified. ' Ah Heavens ! ' or ' Oh my God ! ' are 
exclamations with us so exclusively reserved for cases 
of profound interest, — that on hearing a woman even 
(i. e. a person of the sex most easily excited) utter 
such words, we look round expecting to see her child 
in some situation of danger. But, in France, ' Ciel ! ' 
and ' Oh mon Dieu ! ' are uttered by every woman if a 
mouse does but run across the floor. The ignorant 
and the thoughtless, however, will continue to class the 
English character under the phlegmatic temperament, 
whilst the philosopher will perceive that it is the exact 
polar antithesis to a phlegmatic character. In this 
conclusion, though otherwise expressed and illustrated, 
Walking Stewart's view of the English character will 
be found to terminate : and his opinion is especially 
valuable — first and chiefly, because he was a philoso- 
pher ; secondly, because his acquaintance with man 
civilized and uncivilized, under all national distinctions, 
was absolutely unrivalled. Meantime, this and others 
of his opinions were expressed in language that if 
literally construed would often appear insane or absurd. 
The truth is, his long intercourse with foreign nations 
had given something of a hybrid tincture to his diction ; 
in some of his works, for instance, he uses the French 
word helas ! uniformly for the English alas ! and 
apparently with no consciousness of his mistake. He 
had also this singularity about him — that he was 
everlastingly metaphysicizing against metaphysics. To 
me, who was buried in metaphysical reveries from my 



244 A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 

earliest days, this was not likely to be an attraction 4 
any more than the vicious structure of his diction was 
likely to please my scholarlike taste. All grounds of 
disgust, however, gave way before my sense of his 
powei-ful merits ; and, as I have said, I sought his 
acquaintance. Coming up to London from Oxford 
about 1807 or 1808 I made inquiries about him ; and 
found that he usually read the papers at a coffee-room 
in Piccadilly : understanding that he was poor, it struck 
me that he might not wish to receive visits at hi? 
lodgings, and therefore I sought him at the coffee- 
room. Here I took the liberty of introducing myself 
to him. He received me courteously, and invited me 
to his rooms — which at that time were in Sherrard- 
street, Golden-square — a street already memorable to 
me. I was much struck with the eloquence of his 
conversation ; and afterwards I found that Mr. Words- 
worth, himself the most eloquent of men in convei'sa- 
tion, had been equally struck when he had met him at 
Paris between the years 1790 and 1792, during the 
early storms of the French revolution. In Sherrard- 
street I visited him repeatedly, and took notes of the 
conversations I had with him on various subjects. 
These I must have somewhere or other; and I wish I 
could introduce them here, as they would interest the 
reader. Occasionally in these conversations, as in his 
books, he introduced a few notices of his private 
history : in particular I remember his telling me that 
in the East Indies he had been a prisoner of Hyder's : 
that he had escaped with some difficulty ; and that, in 
the service of one of the native princes as secretary or 
interpreter, he had accumulated a small fortune. This 
must have been too small, I fear, at that timo to allow 



A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER 245 

him even a philosopher's comforts : for some part of 
it, invested in the French funds, had been conliscated. 
I was grieved to see a man of so much ability, of 
gentlemanly manners, and refined habits, and with the 
infirmity of deafness, suffering under such obvious 
privations ; and I once took the liberty, on a fit occa- 
sion presenting itself, of requesting that he would 
allo.v me to send him some books which he had been 
casually regretting that he did not possess ; for I was 
at that time in the hey-day of my worldly prosperity. 
This offer, however, he declined with firmness and 
dignity, though not unkindly. And I now mention it, 
because I have seen him charged in print with a selfish 
regard to his own pecuniary interest. On the contrary, 
he appeared to me a very liberal and generous man : 
and I well remember that, whilst he refused to accept 
of any thing from me, he compelled me to receive as 
presents all the books which he published during my 
acquaintance with him : two of these, corrected with 
his own hand, viz. the Lyre of Apollo and the Sophi- 
onietcr, I have lately found amongst other books left in 
London ; and others he forwarded to me in Westmore- 
iand. In 1809 I saw him often : in the spring of that 
year, I happened to be in London ; and Mr. Words- 
worth's tract on the Convention of Cintra being at that 
time in the printer's hands, I superintended the pub- 
lication of it ; and, at Mr. Wordsworth's request, I 
added a long note on Spanish affairs which is printed 
in the Appendix. The opinions I expressed in this 
note on the Spanish character at that time much 
calumniated, on the retreat to Corunna then fresh in 
the public mind, above all, the contempt I expressed 
for the superstition in respect to the French military 



246 A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 

prowess which was then universal and at its height, 
and which gave way in fact only to the campaigns of 
1814 and 1815, fell in, as it happened, with Mr. 
Stewart's political creed in those points where at that 
time it met with most opposition. In 1812 it was, I 
think, that I saw him for the last time : and by the 
way, on the day of my parting with him, I had an 
amusing proof in my own experience of that sort of 
ubiquity ascribed to him by a witty writer in the 
London Magazine : I met him and shook hands with 
him under Somerset-house, telling him that I should 
leave town that evening for Westmoreland. Thence I 
went by the very shortest road (i. e. through Moor- 
street, Soho — for I am learned in many quarters of 
London) towards a point which necessarily led me 
through Tottenham-court-road : I stopped nowhere, 
and walked fast: yet so it was that in Tottenham- 
court-road I was not overtaken by {that was compre- 
prehensible), but overtook. Walking Stewart. Cer- 
tainly, as the above writer alleges, there must have 
been three Walking Stewarts in London. He seemed 
no ways surprised at this himself, but explained to me 
that somewhere or other in the neighborhood of Tot- 
tenham-court-road there was a little theatre, at which 
there was dancing and occasionally good singing, be- 
tween which and a neighboring coffee-house he some- 
times divided his evenings. Singing, it seems, he 
could hear in spite of his deafness. In this street 1 
took my final leave of him ; it turned out such ; and, 
anticipating at the time that it would be so, I looked 
after his white hat at the moment it was disappearing 
and exclaimeJ — 'Farewell, thou half-crazy and most 
*:loquent man! I shall never see thy face again.' I 



A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 247 

aid not intend, at that moment, to visit London again 
for some years : as it happened, I was there for a 
short time in 1814: and then I heard, to my great 
satisfaction, that Walking Stewart had recovered a 
considerable sum (about ^14,000 I believe) from the 
East India Company ; and from the abstract given in 
the London Magazine of the Memoir by his relation, I 
have since learned that he applied this money most 
wisely to the purchase of an annuity, and that he 
'persisted in living' too long for the peace of an 
annuity office. So fare all companies East and West, 
and all annuity offices, that stand opposed in interest 
to philosophers ! In 1814, however, to my great re- 
gret, I did not see him ; for I was then taking a great 
deal of opium, and never could contrive to issue to the 
light of day soon enough for a morning call upon a 
philosopher of such early hours ; and in the evening I 
concluded that he would be generally abroad, from 
what he had formerly communicated to me of his own 
habits. It seems, however, that he afterwards held 
conversaziones at his own rooms ; and did not stir out 
to theatres quite so much. From a brother of mine, 
who at one time occupied rooms in the same house 
with him, 1 learned that in other respects he did not 
deviate in his prosperity from the philosophic tenor of 
his former life. He abated nothing of his peripatetic 
exercises ; and repaired duly in the morning, as he 
had done in former years, to St. Jaiines's Park, — 
where he sate in contemplative ease amongst the 
cows, inhaling their balmy breath and pursuing his 
philosophic reveries. He had also purchased an organ, 
or more than one, with which he solaced his solitude 
and beguiled himself of uneasy thoughts if he ever 
had any. 



248 A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 

The works of Walking Stewart must be read with 
some indulgence ; the titles are generally too lofty and 
pretending and somewhat extravagant ; the compo- 
sition is lax and unprecise, as I have before said ; and 
the doctrines are occasionally very bold, incautiously 
stated, and too hardy and high-toned for the nervous 
effeminacy of many modern moralists. But Walking 
Stewart was a man who thought nobly of human 
nature : he wrote therefore at times in the spirit and 
with the indignation of an ancient prophet against the 
oppressors and destroyers of the time. In particular I 
remember that in one or more of the pamphlets which 
I received from him at Grasmere he expressed himself 
in such terms on the subject of Tyrannicide (dis- 
tinguishing the cases in which it was and was not 
lawful) as seemed to Mr. Wordsworth and myself 
every way worthy of a philosopher ; but, from the 
way in which that subject was treated in the House of 
Commons, where it was at that time occasionally in- 
troduced, it was plain that his doctrine was not fitted 
for the luxurious and relaxed morals of the age. Like 
all men who think nobly of human nature. Walking 
Stewart thought of it hopefully. In some respects his 
hopes were wisely grounded ; in others they rested too 
much upon certain metaphysical speculations which 
are untenable, and which satisfied himself only be- 
cause his researches in that track had been purely 
self-originated and self-disciplined. He relied upon 
his own native strength of mind ; but in questions, 
which the wisdom and philosophy of every age build- 
ing successively upon each other have not been able 
to settle, no mind, however strong, is entitled to build 
wholly upon itself. In many things he shocked the 



A PERIPATETIC PIIILOSOPHEK. 249 

leligious sense — especially as it exists in unphilosophic 
minds ; he held a sort of rude and unscientific Spinos-- 
ism ; and he expressed it coarsely and in the way 
most likely to give offence. And indeed there can be 
no stronger proof of the utter obscurity in which his 
works have slumbered than that they should all have 
escaped prosecution. He also allowed himself to look 
too lightly and indulgently on the afflicting spectacle 
of female prostitution as it exists in London and in all 
great cities. This was the only point on which I was 
disposed to quarrel with him ; for I could not but view 
it as a greater reproach to human nature than the 
slave-trade or any sight of wretchedness that the sun 
looks down upon. I often told him so ; and that I was 
at a loss to guess how a philosopher could allow him- 
self to view it simply as part of the equipage of civil 
life, and as reasonably making part of the establish- 
ment and furniture of a great city as police-offices, 
lamp-lighting, or newspapers. Waiving however this 
one instance of something like compliance with the 
brutal spirit of the world, on all other subjects he was 
eminently unworldly, child-like, simple-minded, and 
upright. He would flatter no man : even when ad- 
dressing nations, it is almost laughable to see how 
invariably he prefaces his counsels with such plain 
truths uttered in a manner so offensive as must have 
defeated his purpose if it had otherwise any chance 
of being accomplished. For instance, in addressing 
America, he begins thus : — ' People of America ! 
since your separation from the mother-country your 
moral character has degenerated in the energy of 
thought and sense ; produced by the absence of your 
association and intercourse with British officers and 



250 A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER.. 

merchants : you have no moral discernment to dis- 
tinguish between the protective power of England and 
the destructive power of France.' And his letter to 
the Irish nation opens in this agreeable and conciliatory 
manner: — 'People of Ireland! I address you as a 
true philosopher of nature, foreseeing the perpetual 
misery your irreflective character and total absence 
of moral discernment are preparing for' &c. The 
second sentence begins thus — ' You are sacrilegiously 
arresting the arm of your parent kingdom fighting the 
cause of man and nature, when the triumph of the 
fiend of French police-terror would be your own 
instant extirpation — .' And the letter closes thus ; — 
' I see but one awful alternative — that Ireland will be 
a perpetual moral volcano, threatening the destruction 
of the world, if the education and instruction of thought 
and sense shall not be able to generate the faculty of 
moral discernment among a very numerous class of 
the population, who detest the civic calm as sailors the 
natural calm — and make civic rights on which they 
cannot reason a pretext for feuds which they delight 
in.' As he spoke freely and boldly to others, so he 
spoke loftily of himself: at p. 313, of 'The Harp of 
Apollo,' on making a comparison of himself with 
Socrates (in which he naturally gives the preference 
to himself) he styles 'The Harp,' &c. 'this un- 
paralleled work of human energy.' At p. 315, he 
calls it ' this stupendous work ; ' and lower down on 
the same page he says — ' I was turned out of school 
at the age of fifteen for a dunce or blockhead, because 
I would not stuff" into my memory all the nonsense of 
erudition and learning ; and if future ages should dis- 
cover the unparalleled energies of genius in this work, 



A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER 251 

it will prove my most important doctrine — that the 
powers of the human mind must be developed in the 
education of thought and sense in the study of moral 
opinion, not arts and science.' Again, at p. 225 of 
his Sophiometer, he says: — 'The paramount thought 
tluit dwells in my mind incessantly is a question I 
put to myself — whether, in the event of my personal 
dissolution by death, I have communicated all the 
discoveries my unique mind possesses in the great 
master-science of man and nature.' In the next page 
he determines that he has, with the exception of one 
truth, — viz. 'the latent energy, physical and moral, 
of human nature as existing in the British people.' 
But here he was surely accusing himself without 
ground : for to my knowledge he has not failed in any 
one of his numerous works to insist upon this theme 
at least a billion of times. Another instance of his 
magnificent self-estimation is — that in the title pages 
of several of his works he announces himself as ' John 
Stewart, the only man of nature * that ever appeared 
in the world.' 

By this time I am afraid the reader begins to suspect 
that he was crazy : and certainly, when I consider 
every thing, he must have been crazy when the wind 
was at NNE ; for who but Walking Stewart ever 
dated his books by a computation drawn — not from 
the creation, not from the flood, not from Nabonassar. 
or ab urbe conditd, not from the Hegira — but from 

* In Bath he was surnamed ' the Child of Nature ; ' — which 
arose from his contrasting on every occasion the existing man 
of our present experience with the ideal or Stewartian man that 
might be expected to emerge in seme myriads of ages ; to which 
latter man he gave the name of the Child of Natire. 



252 A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 

themselves, from their own day of publication, as con- 
stituting the one great era in the history of man by 
the side of which all other eras were frivolous and 
impertinent ? Thus, in a work of his given to me in 
1812 and probably published in that year, I find him 
incidentally recording of himself that he was at that 
time ' arrived at the age of sixty-three, with a firm 
state of health acquired by temperance, and a peace 
of mind almost independent of the vices of mankind — 
because my knowledge of life has enabled me to place 
my happiness beyond the reach or contact of other 
men's follies and passions, by avoiding all family con- 
nections, and all ambitious pursuits of profit, fame, or 
power.' On reading this passage I was anxious to 
ascertain its date ; but this, on turning to the title page, 
I found thus mysteriously expressed : ' In the 7000th 
year of Astronomical History, and the first day of 
Intellectual Life or Moral World, from the era of this 
work.' Another slight indication of craziness appeared 
in a notion which obstinately haunted his mind that all 
the kmgs and rulers of the earth would confederate in 
every age against his works, and would hunt them out 
for extermination as keenly as Herod did the innocents 
in Bethlehem. On this consideration, fearing that they 
might be intercepted by the long arms of these wicked 
princes before they could reach that remote Stewartian 
man or his precursor to whom they were maioly ad- 
dressed, he recommended to all those who mrght be 
impressed with a sense of their importance to bury a 
copy or copies of each work properly secured from 
damp, &c. at a depth of seven or eight feet WJl'^w the 
surface of the earth; and on their death-beds tv com 
municate the knowledge of this fact to sof» i con' 



A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 253 

fidential friends, who in their turn were to send down 
the tradition to some discreet persons of the next 
generation ; and thus, if the truth was not to be dis- 
persed for many ages, yet the knowledge that here 
and there the truth lay buried on this and that con- 
tinent, in secret spots on Mount Caucasus — in the 
sands of Biledulgerid — and in hiding-places amongst 
the forests of America, and was to rise again in some 
distant age and to vegetate and fructify for the univer- 
sal benefit of man, — this knowledge at least was to 
be whispered down from genei'ation to generation ; 
and, in defiance of a myriad of kings crusading against 
him, Walking Stewart was to stretch out the influence 
of his writings through a long series of XaunaSocpaQoi to 
that child of nature whom he saw dimly through a 
vista of many centuries. If this were madness, it 
seemed to me a somewhat sublime madness : and I 
assured him of my co-operation against the kings, 
promising that I would bury ' The Harp of Apollo ' in 
my own orchard in Grasmere at the foot of Mount 
Fairfield ; that I would bury ' The Apocalypse of 
Nature ' in one of the coves of Helvellyn, and several 
other works in several other places best known to 
myself He accepted my offer with gratitude ; but 
he then made known to me that he relied on my 
assistance for a still more important service — which 
was this : in the lapse of that vast number of ages 
which would probably intervene between the present 
period and the period at which his works would have 
reached their destination, he feared that the English 
language might itself have mouldered away. ' No ! ' 
I said, ' that was not probable : considering its exten- 
sive difl^usion, and that it was now transplanted into all 



254 A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 

the continents of our planet, I would back the English 
language against any other on earth.' His own per- 
suasion however was, that the Latin was destined to 
survive all other languages ; it was to be the eternal 
as well as the universal language ; and his desire was 
that I would translate his works, or some part of them, 
into that language.* This 1 promised ; and I seriously 
designed at some leisure hour to translate into Latin a 
selection of passages which should embody an abstract 
of his philosophy. This would have been doing a 
service to all those who might wish to see a digest of 
his peculiar opinions cleared from the perplexities of 
his peculiar diction and brought into a narrow compass 
from the great number of volumes through which they 
are at present dispersed. However, like many another 
plan of mine, it went unexecuted. 

On the whole, if Walking Stewart were at all crazy, 
he was so in a way which did not affect his natural 
genius and eloquence — but rather exalted them. The 

* I was not aware until the moment of writing this passage 
that Walking Stewart had publicly made this request three years 
after making it to myself: opening the 'Harp of Apollo,' I have 
just now accidentally stumbled on the following passage, ' This 
stupendous work is destined, I fear, to meet a worse tUte than 
the Aloe, which as soon as it blossoms loses its stalk. This first 
blossom of reason is threatened with the loss of both its stalk 
and its soil : for, if the revolutionary tyrant should triumph, he 
would destroy all the English books and energies of thought. I 
conjure my readers to translate this work into Latin, and to 
bury it in the ground, communicating on their death-beds only 
its place of concealment to men of nature. ' 

From the title page of this work, by the way, I learn that 
•the 7000th year of Astronomical History' is taken from the 
Chinese tables, and coincides (as I had supposed) with the year 
1812 of our computation. 



1 



A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 255 ' 

old maxim, indeed, that ' Great wits to madness sure 
are near allied,' the maxim of Dryden and the popular 
maxim, I have heard disputed by Mr. Coleridge and 
Mr. Wordsworth, who maintain tlmt mad people are 
the dullest and most wearisome of all people. As a 
body, I believe they are so. But I must dissent from 
ths authority of Messrs. Coleridge and Wordsworth so 
far as to distinguish. Where madness is connected, 
as it often is, with some miserable derangement of 
the stomach, liver, &c. and attacks the principle of 
pleasurable life, which is manifestly seated in the 
central organs of the body (i. e. in the stomach and 
the apparatus connected with it), there it cannot but 
lead to perpetual suffering and distraction of thought ; 
and there the patient will be often tedious and in- 
coherent. People who have not suffered from any 
great disturbance in those organs are little aware how 
indispensable to the process of thinking are the mo- 
mentary influxes of pleasurable feeling from the regular 
goings on of life in its primary function ; in fact, until 
the pleasure is withdrawn or obscured, most people 
are not aware that they have any pleasure from the 
due action of the great central machinery of the 
system : proceeding in uninterrupted continuance, the 
pleasure as much escapes the consciousness as the act 
of respiration : a child, in the happiest state of its 
existence, does not know that it is happy. And gen- 
erally whatsoever is the level state of the hourly feeling 
is never put down by the unthinking {i. e. by 99 out 
of 100) to the account of happiness : it is never put 
down with the positive sign, as equal to -j- x ; but 
simply as z=. 0. And men first become aware that it 
was a positive quantity, when they have lost it (i. e. 



256 A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 

fallen into — x). Meantime the genial pleasure from 
the vital processes, though not represented to the con- 
sciousness, is immanent in every act — impulse — ' 
motion — word — and thought : and a philosopher sees 
that the idiots are in a state of pleasure, though they 
cannot see it themselves. Now I say that, where this 
principle of pleasure is not attached, madness is often 
little more than an enthusiasm highly exalted ; the 
animal spirits are exuberant and in excess ; and the 
madman becomes, if he be otherwise a man of ability 
and information, all the better as a companion. I have 
met with several such madmen ; and I appeal to my 

brilliant friend. Professor W , who is not a man to 

tolerate dulness in any quarter, and is himself the ideal 
of a delightful companion, whether he ever met a more 
amusing person than that madman who took a post- 
chaise with us from to Carlisle, long years ago, 

when he and I were hastening with the speed of fugi- 
tive felons to catch the Edinburgh mail. His fancy 
and his extravagance, and his furious attacks on Sir 
Isaac Newton, like Plato's suppers, refreshed us not 
only for that day but whenever they recurred to us ; 
and we were both grieved when we heard some time 
afterwards from a Cambridge man that he had met our 
clever friend in a stage coach under the care of a 

brutal keeper. Such a madness, if any, was the 

madness of Walking Stewart : his health was perfect ; 
his spirits as light and ebullient as the spirits of a bird 
m spring-time ; and his mind unagitated by painful 
thoughts, and at peace with itself. Hence, if he was 
not an amusing companion, it was because the philoso- 
phic direction of his thoughts made him something 
more. Of anecdotes and matters of fact he was not 



A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 257 

communicative : of aH that he had seen in the vast 
compass of his travels he never availed himself in 
conversation. I do not remember at this moment that 
he ever once alluded to his own travels in his inter- 
course with me except for the purpose of weighing 
down by a statement grounded on his own great per- 
sonal experience an opposite statement of many hasty 
and misjudging travellers which he thought injurious to 
human nature : the statement was this, that in all his 
countless rencontres with uncivilized tribes, he had 
never met with any so ferocious and brutal as to attack 
an unarmed and defenceless man who was able to 
make them understand that he threw himself upon 
their hospitality and forbearance. 

On the whole. Walking Stewart was a sublime 
visionary : he had seen and suffered much amongst 
men ; yet not too much, or so as to dull the genial tone 
of his sympathy with the sufferings of others. His 
mind was a mirror of the sentient universe. — The 
whole mighty vision that had fleeted before his eyes in 
this world, — the armies of Hyder- Ali and his son with 
oriental and barbaric pageantry, — the civic grandeur 
of England, the great deserts of Asia and America, — 
the vast capitals of Europe, — London with its eternal 
agitations, the ceaseless ebb and flow of its ' mighty 
heart,' — Paris shaken by the fierce torments of revo- 
lutionary convulsions, the silence of Lapland, and the 
solitary forests of Canada, with the swarming life of 
the torrid zone, together with innumerable recollections 
of individual joy and sorrow, that he had participated 
by sympathy — lay like a map beneath him, as if 
eternally co-present to his view ; so that, in the con- 
templation of the prodigious whole, he had no leisure 
22 



258 A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 

to separate the parts, or occupy his mind with details. 
Hence came the monotony which the frivolous and the 
desultory would have found in his conversation. I, 
however, who am perhaps the person best qualified to 
speak of him, must pronounce him to have been a man 
of great genius ; and, with reference to his conversation, 
of great eloquence. That these were not better known 
and acknowledged was owing to two disadvantages ; 
one grounded in his imperfect education, the other in 
the peculiar structure of his mind. The first was this : 
like the late Mr. Shelley he had a fine vague enthusiasm 
and lofty aspirations in connection with human nature 
generally and its hopes ; and like him he strove to 
give steadiness, a uniform direction, and an intelligible 
purpose to these feelings, by fitting to them a scheme 
of philosophical opinions. But unfortunately the philo- 
sophic system of both was so far from supporting their 
own views and the cravings of their own enthusiasm, 
that, as in some points it was baseless, incoherent, or 
unintelligible, so in others it tended to moral results, 
from which, if they had foreseen them, they would 
have been themselves the first to shrink as contra- 
dictory to the very purposes in which their system had 
originated. Hence, in maintaining their own system 
they both found themselves painfully entangled at 
times with tenets pernicious and degrading to human 
nature. These were the inevitable consequences of 
the 7TQWT0V ipevSo? in their speculations ; but were natur- 
ally charged upon them by those who looked carelessly 
into their books as opinions which not only for the 
sake of consistency they thought themselves bound to 
endure, but to which they gave the full weight of their 
sanction and patronage as to so many moving princi- 



A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. 259 

pies in their system. The other disadvantage under 
which Walking Stewart labored, was this : he was a 
man of genius, but not a man of talents ; at least his 
genius was out of all proportion to his talents, and 
wanted an organ as it were for manifesting itself; so 
that his most original thoughts were delivered in a 
crude state — imperfect, obscure, half developed, and 
not producible to a popular audience. He was aware 
of this himself ; and, though he claims everywhere the 
faculty of profound intuition into human nature, yet 
with equal candor he accuses himself of asinine stu- 
pidity, dulness, and want of talent. He was a dispro- 
portioned intellect, and so far a monster : and he must 
be added to the long list of original-minded men who 
have been looked down upon with pity and contempt 
by commonplace men of talent, whose powers of 
mind — though a thousand times inferior — were yet 
more manageable, and ran in channels more suited to 
common uses and common understandings. 



ON SUICIDE. 



It is a remarkable proof of the inaccuracy with 
which most men read — that Donne's Biathanatos has 
been supposed to countenance Suicide ; and those who 
reverence his name have thought themselves obliged 
to apologize for it by urging, that it was written before 
he entered the church. But Donne's purpose in this 
treatise was a pious one : many authors had charged 
the martyrs of the Christian church with Suicide — on 
the principle that if I put myself in the way of a mad 
bull, knowing that he will kill me — I am as much 
chargeable with an act of self-destruction as if I (ling 
myself into a river. Several casuists had extended 
this principle even to the case of Jesus Christ : one 
instance of which, in a modern author, the reader 
may see noticed and condemned by Kant, in his Re- 
ligion innerhalb die gronzen der blossen Vernunft ; and 
another of much earlier date (as far back as the 13th 
century, I think), in a commoner book — Voltaire's 
notes on the little treatise of Beccaria, Dei delitti e 
delle pene. These statements tended to one of two 
results : either they unsanctified the characters of those 
who founded and nursed the Christian church ; or they 
sanctified suicide. By way of meeting them, Donne 
wrote his book : and as the whole argument of his 
[260] 



i 



ON SUICIDE. 261 

opponents turned upon a false definition of suicide 
(not explicitly stated, but assumed), he endeavored to 
reconstitute the notion of what is essential to create an 
act of suicide. Simply to kill a man is not murder : 
prima facie, therefore, there is some sort of presump- 
tion that simply for a man to kill himself — may not 
always be so : there is such a thing as simple homi- 
cide distinct from murder : there may, therefore, pos- 
sibly be such a thing as self-homicide distinct from 
self-murder. There may be a ground for such a 
distinction^ ex analogid. But, secondly, on examina- 
tion, is there any ground for such a distinction ? 
Donne affirms that there is ; and, reviewing several 
eminent cases of spontaneous martyrdom, he endeavors 
to show that acts so motived and so circumstantiated 
will not come within the notion of suicide properly 
defined. Meantime, may not this tend to the encour- 
agement of suicide in general, and without discrimina- 
tion of its species } No : Donne's arguments have no 
prospective reference or application ; they are purely 
retrospective. The circumstances necessary to create 
an act of mere self-homicide can rarely concur, except 
in a state of disordered society, and during the cardinal 
revolutions of human history : where, however,, they 
do concur, there it will not be suicide. In fact, this is 
the natural and practical judgment of us all. We dc> 
not all agree on the particular cases which will justify 
self-destruction : but we all feel and involunta-rily 
acknowledge {implicitly acknowledge in our admira 
tion, though not explicitly in our words or in our 
principles), that there are such cases. There is no 
man, who in his heart would not reverence a woman 
that chose to die rather than to be dishonored : and, 



262 



ON suicroE. 



if we do not say, tnat it is her duty to do so, that is 
because the moralist must condescend to the weakness 
and infirmities of human nature : mean and ignoble 
natures must not be taxed up to the level of noble 
ones. Again, with regard to the other sex, corporal 
punishment is its peculiar and sexual degradation ; 
and if ever the distinction of Donne can be applied 
safely to any case, it will be to the case of him who 
chooses to die rather than to submit to that ignominy. 
At present^ however, there is but a dim and very con- 
fined sense, even amongst enlightened men (as we 
may see by the debates of Parliament), of the injury 
which is done to human nature by giving legal sanc- 
tion to such brutalizing acts; and therefore most men, 
in seeking to escape it, would be merely shrinking 
from a personal dishonor. Corporal punishment is 
usually argued with a single reference to the case of 
him who suffers it ; and so argued, God knows that it 
is worthy of all abhorrence : but the weightiest argu- 
ment against it — is the foul indignity which is offered 
to our common nature lodged in the person of him on 
whom it is inflicted. His nature is our nature : and, 
supposing it possible that he were so far degraded as 
to be unsusceptible of any influences but those which 
address him through the brutal part of his natui'e, yet 
for the sake of ourselves — No ! not merely for our- 
selves, or for the human race now existing, but for the 
sake of human nature, which trancends all existing 
participators of that nature — we should remember 
that the evil of corpoi'al punishment is not to be 
measured by the poor transitory criminal, whose 
memory and offence are soon to perish: these, in 
the sum of things, are as nothing : the injury which 



i 



ON SUICIDE. 2G3 

can be done him, and the injury which ne can do, have 
so momentary an existence that they may be safely 
neglected • but the abiding injury is to the most august 
interest which for the mind of man can have any ex- 
istence, — viz. to his own nature : to raise and dignify 
which, I am persuaded, is the first — last — and holiest 
command * which the conscience imposes on the phi- 
losophic nioi'alist. In countries, whei*e the traveller 
has the pain of seeing human creatures performing the 
labors of brutes, t — surely the sorrow which the 
spectacle moves, if a wise sorrow, will not be chiefly 
directed to the poor degraded individual — too deeply 
degraded, probably, to be sensible of his own degrada- 

* On •which account, I am the more struck by the ignoble 
argument of those statesmen who have contended in the House 
of Commons that such and such classes of men in this nation are 
not accessible to any loftier influences. Supposing that there 
were any truth in this assertion, which is a libel not on this 
nation only, but on man in general, — surely it is the duty of 
lawgivers not to perpetuate by their institutions the evil which 
they find, but to presume and gradually to create a better 
spirit. 

t Of which degradation, let it never be forgotten that France 
but thirty years ago presented as shocking cases as any country, 
even where slavery is tolerated. An eye-witness to the fact, who 
has since published it in print, told me, that in France, before 
the revolution, he had repeatedly seen a woman yoked with an 
ass to the plough ; and the brutal ploughman applying his whip 
indifferently to either. English people, to whom I have occa- 
sionally mentioned this as an exponent of the hollow refinement 
of manners in France, have uniformly exclaimed — ' That is 
more than I can believe ; ' and have taken it for granted that I 
had my information from some prejudiced Englishman. But 
who was my informer? A Frenchman, reader, — M. Simond ; 
and though now by adoption an American citizen, yet still French 
in his heart and in all liis prejudices. 



264 ON SUICIDE. 

tion, but to the reflection that man's nature is thus 
exhibited in a state of miserable abasement; and, what 
is worst of all, abasement proceeding from man him- 
self. Now, whenever this view of corporal punish- 
ment becomes general (as inevitably it will, under the 
mfluence of advancing civilization), I say, that Donne's 
principle will then become applicable to this case, and 
it will be the duty of a man to die rather than to suffer 
his own nature to be dishonored in that way. But so 
long as a man is not fully sensible of the dishonor, to 
him the dishonor, except as a personal one, does not 
wholly exist. In general, whenever a paramount in- 
terest of human nature is at stake, a suicide which 
maintains that interest is self-homicide : but, for a per- 
sonal interest, it becomes self-murder. And into this 
principle Donne's may be resolved. 

A doubt has been raised — whether brute animals 
ever commit suicide : to me it is obvious that they do 
not, and cannot. Some years ago, however, there 
was a case reported in all the newspapers of an old 
ram who committed suicide (as it was alleged) in the 
presence of many witnesses. Not having any pistols 
or razors, he ran for a short distance, in order to aid 
the impetus of his descent, and leaped over a precipice, 
at the foot of which he was dashed to pieces. His 
motive to the ' rash act,' as the papers called it, was 
supposed to be mere tcedium vitcB. But, for my part, 
I doubted the accuracy of the report. Not long after 
a case occurred in Westmoreland which strengthened 
my doubts. A fine young blood horse, who could 
have no possible reason for making away with him- 
self, unless it were the high price of oats at that time, 



ON SUICIDE. 265 

was found one morning dead in his field. The case 
was certainly a suspicious one : for he was lying by 
the side of a stone-wall, the upper part of which wall 
his skull had fractured, and which had returned the 
compliment by fracturing his skull. It was argued, 
therefore, that in default of ponds, &c. he had de- 
liberately hammered with his head against the wall; 
this, at first, seemed the only solution ; and he was 
generally pronounced felo de se. However, a day or 
two brought the truth to light. The field lay upon the 
side of a hill : and, from a mountain which rose above 
it, a shepherd had witnessed the whole catastrophe, 
and gave evidence which vindicated the character of 
the horse. The day had been very windy ; and the 
young creature being in high spirits, and, caring evi- 
dently as little for the corn question as for the bullion 
question, had raced about in all directions ; and at 
length, descending too steep a part of the field, had 
been unable to check himself, and was projected by 
the impetus of his own descent like a battering ram 
against the wall. 

Of human suicides, the most affecting I have ever 
seen recorded is one which I met with in a German 
book : the most calm and deliberate is the following, 
which is said to have occurred at Keswick, in Cum- 
berland : but I must acKnowledge, that I never had an 
opportunity, whilst staying at Keswick, of verifying 
the statement. A young man of studious turn, who is 
said to have resided near Penrith, was anxious to 
qualify himself for entering the church, or for any 
other mode of life which might secure to him a reason- 
able portion of literary leisure. His family, however, 
23 



266 ON SUICIDE. 

thought that under the circumstances of his situation 
he would have a better chance for success in hfe as a 
tradesman ; and they took the necessary steps for 
placing him as an apprentice at some shopkeeper's in 
Penrith. This he looked upon as an indignity, to 
which he was determined in no case to submit. And 
accordingly, when he had ascertained that all oppo- 
sition to the choice of his friends was useless, he 
walked over to the mountainous district of Keswick 
(about sixteen miles distant) — looked about him in 
order to select his ground — cooly walked up Lattrig 
(a dependency of Skiddaw) — made a pillow of sods 
— laid himself down with his face looking up to the 
sky — and in that posture was found dead, with the 
appearance of having died tranquilly. 



} 



SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE. 

It is asserted that this is the age of Superficial 
Knowledge ; and amongst the proofs of this assertion 
we find Encyclopaedias and other popular abstracts of 
knowledge particularly insisted on. But in this notion 
and its alleged proofs there is equal error — wherever 
there is much diffusion of knowledge, there must be a 
good deal of superficiality : prodigious extension im- 
plies a due proportion of weak intension ; a sea-like 
expansion of knowledge will cover large shallows as 
well as large depths. But in that quarter in which it 
is superficially cultivated the intellect of this age is 
properly opposed in any just comparison to an intellect 
without any culture at all : — leaving the deep soils out 
of the comparison, the shallow ones of the present day 
would in any preceding one have been barren wastes. 
Of this our modern encyclopaedias are the best proof. 
For whom are they designed, and by whom used ? — 
By those who in a former age would have gone to the 
fountain heads ? No, but by those who in any age 
preceding the present would have drunk at no waters 
at all. Encyclopaedias are the growth of the las; 
hundred years ; not because those who were formerly 
students of higher learning have descended, but be- 
cause those who were below encyclopaedias have 

[2671 



268 SUPEKFICIAL KNOWLEDGE. 

ascended. The greatness of the ascent is marked by 
the style in which the more recent encyclopaedias are 
executed : at first they were mere abstracts of existing 
books — well or ill executed: at present they contain 
many original articles of great merit. As in the 
periodical literature of the age, so in the encyclopeedias 
It has become a matter of ambition with the publishers 
to retain the most eminent writers in each several de- 
partment. And hence it is that our encyclopsedias 
now display one characteristic of this age — the very 
opposite of superficiality (and which on other grounds 
we are well assured of) — viz. its tendency in science, 
no less than in other applications of industry, to ex- 
treme subdivision. In all the employments which are 
dependent in any degree upon the political economy 
of nations, this tendency is too obvious to have been 
overlooked. Accordingly it has long been noticed for 
congratulation in manufactures and the useful arts — 
and for censure in the learned professions. We have 
now, it is alleged, no great and comprehensive lawyers 
like Coke : and the study of medicine is subdividing 
itself into a distinct ministry (as it were) not merely 
upon the several organs of the body (oculists, aurists, 
dentists, cheiropodists, &c.) but almost upon the several 
diseases of the same organ : one man is distinguished 
for the treatment of liver complaints of one class — 
a second for those of another class ; one man for 
asthma — another for phthisis; and so on. As to the 
law, the evil (if it be one) lies in the complex state of 
society which of necessity makes the laws complex : 
law itself is become unwieldy and beyond the graso 
of one man's term of life and possible range of expe 
rience : and will never again come within them 



SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE. 269 

Wall respect to medicine, the case is no evil but a 
great benefit — so long as the subdividing principle 
does not descend too low to allow of a perpetual re- 
ascent into the generalizing principle (the j'u commune) 
which secures the unity of the science. In ancient 
times all the evil of such a subdivision was no doubt 
realized in Egypt : for there a distinct body of pro- 
fessors took charge of each organ of the body, not (as 
we may be assured) from any progress of the science 
outgrowing the time and attention of the general pro- 
fessor, but simply from an ignorance of the Organic 
structure of the human body and the reciprocal action 
of the whole upon each part and the parts upon the 
whole ; an ignorance of the same kind which has led 
sailors seriously (and not merely, as may sometimes 
have happened, by way of joke) to reserve one ulcer- 
ated leg to their own management, whilst the other 
was given up to the management of the surgeon. With 
respect to law and medicine then, the difference be- 
tween ourselves and our ancestors is not subjective but 
objective ; not, i. e. in our faculties who study them, 
but in the things themselves which are the objects of 
study : not we (the students) are grown less, but they 
(the studies) are grown bigger; — and that our ances- 
tors did not subdivide as much as we do — was some- 
thing of their luck, but no part of their merit. Simply 
as subdividers therefore to the extent which now pre- 
vails, we are less superficial than any former age. In 
all parts of science the same principle of subdivision 
holds : here therefore, no less than in those parts of 
knowledge which are the subjects of distinct civil pro- 
fessions, we are of necessity more profound than our 
ancestors ; but, for the same reason, less comprehen- 



270 SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE. 

sive than they. Is it better to be a profound studont , 
or a comprehensive one ? In some degree this must 
depend upon the direction of the studies : but generally, 
I think, it is better for the interests of knowledge that 
the scholar should aim at profundity, and better for the 
interests of the individual that he should aim at com 
prehensiveness. A due balance and equilibrium of thf 
mind is but preserved by a large and multiform 
knowledge : but knowledge itself is but served by an 
exclusive (or at least paramount) dedication of one 
mind to one science. The first proposition is perhaps 
unconditionally true : but the second with some limi- 
tations. There are such people as Leibnitzes on this 
earth ; and their office seems not that of planets — to 
revolve within the limits of one system, but that of 
comets (according to the theory of some speculators) 
— to connect different systems together. No doubt 
there is much truth in this : a few Leibnitzes in every 
age would be of much use : but neither are many men 
fitted by nature for the part of Leibnitz ; nor would 
the aspect of knowledge be better, if they were. We 
should then have a state of Grecian life amongst us in 
which every man individually would attain in a moderate 
degree all the purposes of the sane understanding, — 
but in which all the purposes of the sane understand- 
ing would be but moderately attained. What I mean 
is this : — et all the objects of the understanding in 
civil life o . in science be represented by the letters of 
the alphabet ; in Grecian life each man would sepa- 
rately go through all the letters in a tolerable way ; 
whereas at present each letter is served by a distinct 
body of men. Consequently the Grecian individual is 
superior to the modern; but the Grecian whole is 



SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE. 2^ 1 

inferior : for the whole is made up of the individuals ; 
and the Grecian individual repeats himself. Whereas 
in modern life the whole derives its superiority from 
the very circumstances which constitute the inferiority 
of the parts ; for modern life is cast dramatically : and 
the difference is as between an army consisting of sol- 
diers who should each individually be competent to go 
through the duties of a dragoon — of a hussar — of a 
sharp-shooter — of an artillery-man — of a pioneer, 
ice. and an army on its present composition, where 
the very inferiority of the soldier as an individual — 
his inferiority in compass and versatility of power and 
knowledge — is the veiy ground from which the army 
derives its superiority as a whole, viz. because it is 
the condition of the possibility of a total surrender 
of the individual to one exclusive pursuit. In science 
therefore, and (to speak more generally) in the whole 
evolution of the human faculties, no less than in Po- 
litical Economy, the progress of society brings with it 
a necessity of sacrificing the ideal of what is excellent 
for the individual, to the ideal of what is excellent for 
the wiiole. We need therefore not trouble ourselves 
(except as a speculative question) with the comparison 
of the two states ; because, as a practical question, it 
is precluded by the overruling tendencies of the age — 
which no man could counteract except in his own 
single case, i. e. by refusing to adapt himself as a part 
to the whole, and thus foregoing the advantages of 
either one state or the other. * 

♦ The latter part of what is here said coincides, in a way which 
is rather remarkable, with a passage in an interesting work of 
Schiller's which I have since read, (on the Esthetic Education 
of Men, in a series of letters : vid. letter the 6th.) ' With us in 



272 SITPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE. 

order to obtain the representative word (as it were) of the total 
species, we must spell it out by the help of a series of individuals- 
So that on a survey of society as it actually exists, one might 
suppose that the faculties of the mind do really in actual expe- 
rience show themselves in as separate a form, and in as much 
insulation, as psychology is forced to exhibit them in its analysis. 
And thus we see not only individuals, but whole classes of men, 
unfolding only one part of the germs which are laid in them by 
the hand of nature. In saying this I am fully aware of the adr 
vantages which the human species of modern ages has, when 
considered as a unity, over the best of antiquity : but the com- 
parison should begin with the individuals : and then let me ask 
where is the modern individual that would have the presumption 
to step forward against the Athenian individual — man to man, 
and to contend for the prize of human excellence ? The polypus 
nature of the Grecian republics, in which every individual en- 
joyed a separate life, and if it were necessary could become a 
whole, has now given place to an artificial watch-work, where 
many lifeless parts combine to form a mechanic whole. The 
state and the church, laws and manners, are now torn asunder : 
labor is divided from enjoyment, the means from the end, the 
exertion from the reward. Chained for ever to a little individual 
fraction of the whole, man himself is moulded into a fraction ; 
and, with the monotonous whirling of the wheel which he turns 
everlastingly in his ear, he never develops the harmony of his 
being ; and, instead of imaging the totality of human nature, be- 
comes a bare abstract of his business or the science which he 
cultivates. The dead letter takes the place of the living under 
standing ; and a practised memory becomes a surer guide than 
genius and sensibility. Doubtless the power of genius, as we all 
know, will not fetter itself within the limits of its occupation ; 
but talents of medic^^ity are all exhausted in the monotony of 
the employment allotted to them ; and that man must have no 
common head who brings with him the geniality of his powers 
unstripped of their freshness by the ungenial labors of life to the 
cultivation of the genial.' After insisting at some length on this 
wise, Schiller passes to the other side of the contemplation, and 
proceeds thus : — 'It suited my immediate purpose to point out 
the injui-ies of this condition of the species, without displaying 



SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE. 273 

the compensations by ■wliicli nature has balanced them. But I 
■will now readily acknowledge — that, little as this practical con- 
dition may suit the interests of the individual, yet the species 
could in no other way have been progressive. Partial exercise 
of the faculties (literally " one-sidedness in the exercise of the 
faculties") leads the individual undoubtedly into error, but the 
species into trutli. In no other way than by concentrating the 
whole energy of our spirit, and by converging our whole being, 
60 to speak, into a single faculty, can we put wings as it were to 
the individual faculty and carry it by this artificial flight far 
beyond tlie limits within which nature has else doomed it to walk. 
Just as certain as it is that all human beings could never, by 
clubbing their visual powers together, have arrived at the power 
of seeing what the telescope discovers to the astronomer ; just so 
certain it is that the human intellect would never have arrived 
at an analysis of the infinite or a Critical Analysis of the Pure 
Reason (the principal work of Kant), unless individuals had 
dismembered (as it were) and insulated this or that specific 
faculty, and had thus armed their intellectual sight by the 
keenest abstraction and by the submersion of the other powers 
of their nature. Extraordinary men are formed then by ener- 
getic and over-excited spasms as it were in the individual facul- 
ties ; though it is true that the equable exercise of all the faculties 
in harmony with each other can alone make happy and perfect 
men.' After this statement, from which it should seem that in 
the progress of society nature has made it necessary for man to 
sacrifice his own happiness to the attainment of her ends in the 
development of his species, Schiller goes on to inquii'e whether 
this evil result cannot be remedied ; and whether ' the totality 
of our nature, which art has destroyed, might not be re-estab 
lished by a higher art,' — but this, as leading to a discussion 
beyond the limits of my own, I omit. 



ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 

It has already, I believe, been said more than once 
in print that one condition of a good dictionary would 
be to exhibit the history of each word ; that is, to 
record the exact succession of its meanings. But the 
philosophic reason for this has not been given ; which 
reason, by the way, settles a question often agitated, 
viz. whether the true meaning of a word be best ascer- 
tained from its etymology, or from its present use and 
acceptation. Mr. Coleridge says, ' the best explana- 
tion of a word is often that which is suggested by its 
derivation ' (I give the substance of his words from 
memory). Others allege that we have nothing to do 
with the primitive meaning of the word ; that the 
question is — what does it mean now ? and they ap- 
peal, as the sole authority they acknowledge, to the 
received — 

Usus, penes quern est jus et norma loquendi. 

In what degree each party is right, may be judged 
from this consideration — that no word can ever de- 
viate from its first meaning per saltum : each successive 
stage of meaning must always have been determined 
by that which preceded. And on this one law depends 
the whole philosophy of the case : for it thus appears 

[274] 



ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 275 

that the original and primitive sense of the word will 
contain virtually all which can ever afterwards arise : 
as in the evoliUion-theory of generation, the whole 
scries of births is represented as involved in the first 
parent. Now, if the evolution of successive meanings 
has gone on rightly, i. e. by simply lapsing through a 
scries of close affinities, there can be no reason for 
recurring to the primitive meaning of the word : but, 
if it can be shown that the evolution has been faulty, 
i. e. that the chain of true affinities has ever been 
broken through ignorance, then we have a right to 
reform the word, and to appeal from the usage ill- 
instructed to a usage bettei'-instructed. Whether we 
ought to exercise this right, will depend on a considera- 
tion which I will afterwards notice. Meantime I will 
first give a few instances of faulty evolution. 

1. Implicit. This word is now used in a most 
ignorant way ; and from its misuse it has come to be a 
word wholly useless : for it is now never coupled, I 
think, with any other substantive than these two — 
faith and confidence : a poor domain indeed to have 
sunk to from its original wide range of territory. 
Moreover, when we say, implicit faith, or implicit 
confidence, we do not thereby indicate any specific 
kind of faith and confidence differing from other faith 
or other confidence : but it is a vague rhetorical word 
which expresses a great degree of faith and confidence ; 
a faith that is unquestioning, a confidence that is un- 
limited ; i. e. in fact, a faith that is a faith, a confi- 
dence that is a confidence. Such a use of the word 
ought to be abandoned to women : doubtless, when 
sitting in a bower in the month of May, it is pleasant 
to hear from a lovely mouth — 'I put implicit confi* 



276 ENGLISH DICTIONAEIES. 

dence in your honor : ' but, though pretty and becoming 
to such a mouth, it is very unfitting to the mouth of a 
scholar : and I will be bold to affirm that no man, who 
had ever acquired a scholar's knowledge of the English 
language, has used the word in that lax and unmeaning 
way. The history of the word is this. — Implicit 
(from the Latin implicitus, involved in, folded up) was 
always used originally, and still is so by scholars, as 
the direct antithete of explicit (from the Latin explicituSj 
evolved, unfolded ) : and the use of both may be thus 
illustrated. 

Q, ' Did Mr. A. ever say that he would marry Miss 
B. .'' ' — A. ' No ; not explicitly (i. e. in so many 
words) ; but he did implicitly — by showing great dis- 
pleasure if she received attentions from any other 
man ; by asking her repeatedly to select furniture for 
his house ; by consulting her on his own plans of life.' 

Q. ' Did Epicurus maintain any doctrines such as 
are here ascribed to him ? ' — A. ' Perhaps not ex- 
plicitly, either in words or by any other mode of direct 
sanction : on the contrary, 1 believe he denied them — 
and disclaimed them with vehemence : but he main- 
tained them implicitly : for they are involved in other 
acknowledged doctrines of his, and may be deduced 
from them by the fairest and most irresistible logic' 

Q. ' Why did you complain of the man ? Had he 
expressed any contempt for your opinion?' — A. 
' Yes, he had : not explicit contempt, I admit ; for he 
never opened his stupid mouth ; but implicitly he ex- 
pressed the utmost that he could : for, when I had 
spoken two hours against the old newspaper, and in 
favor of the new one, he went instantly and put his 
name down as a subscriber to the old one.' 



ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 277 

Q. ' Did Mr. approve of that gentleman's con- 
duct and way of life?' — A. 'I don't know that I 
ever heard him speak about it : but he seemed to give 
it his implicit approbation by allowing both his sons to 
associate with him when the complaints ran highest 
against him.' 

These instances may serve to illustrate the original 
use of the word ; which use has been retained from 
the sixteenth century down to our own days by an 
uninterrupted chain of writers. In the eighteenth cen- 
tury this use was indeed nearly effaced ; but still in 
the first half of that century it was retained by Saun- 
derson the Cambridge professor of mathematics (see 
his Algebra, &c.), with three or four others, and in 
the latter half by a man to whom Saunderson had 
some resemblance in spring and elasticity ■ of under- 
standing, viz. by Edmund Burke. Since his day I 
know of no writers who have avoided the slang and 
unmeaning use of the word, excepting Messrs. Coleridge 
and Wordsworth ; both of whom (but especially the 
last) have been remarkably attentive to the scholar- 
like * use of words, and to the history of their own 
language. 

Thus much for the primitive use of the word implicit. 

* Among the most shocking of the unscholarlike barbarisms, 
now prevalent, I must notice the use of the word ' nice ' in an 
objective instead of a subjective sense : ' nice ' does not and can- 
not express a quality of the object, but merely a quality of the 
subject : yet we hear daily of ' a very nice letter ' — 'a nice 
young lady,' &c., meaning a letter or a young lady that it is 
pleasant to contemplate : but ' a nice young lady ' — means a 
fastidious young lady ; and ' a nice letter ' ought to mean a letter 
that is very delicate in its rating and in the choice of its 
company. 



278 ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 

Now, with regard to the history of its transition into 
its present use, it is briefly this ; and it will appear at 
once, that it has arisen through ignorance. When it 
was objected to a papist that his church exacted an 
assent to a great body of traditions and doctrines to 
which it was impossible that the great majority could 
be qualified, either as respected time — or knowledge 
— or culture of the understanding, to give any reason- 
able assent, — the answer was : ' Yes ; but that sort 
of assent is not required of a poor uneducated man ; 
all that he has to do — is to believe in the church : 
he is to have faith in her faith : by that act he adopts 
for his own whatsoever the church believes, though he 
may never have heard of it even : his faith is implicit, 
i. e. involved and wrapped up in the faith of the 
church, which faith he firmly believes to be the true 
faith upon the conviction he has that the church is 
preserved from all possibility of erring by the spirit 
of God.' * Now, as this sort of believing by proxy or 
implicit belief (in which the belief was not immediate 
in the thing proposed to the belief, but in the authority 
of another person who believed in that thing and thus 
mediately in the thing itself) was constantly attacked 
by the learned assailants of popery, — it naturally 
happened that many unlearned readers of these pro- 

* Thus Milton, who (in common with his contemporaries) 
always uses the word accurately, speaks of Ezekiel • swallowing 
his implicit roll of knowledge ' — i. e. coming to the knowledge 
of many truths not separately and in detail, but by the act of 
arriving at some one master truth which involved all the rest. — 
So again, if any man or government were to suppress a book, 
that man or government might justly be reproached as the im- 
plicit destroyer of all the wisdom and virtue that might have 
been the remote products of that book. 



ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 279 

tcstant polemics caught at a phrase which was so much 
bandied between the two parties : the spirit of the 
context sufficiently explained to them that it was used 
by protestants as a term of reproach, and indicated a 
faith that was an erroneous faith by being too easy — 
too submissive — and too passive: but the particular 
mode of this erroneousness they seldom came to 
understand, as learned writers naturally employed the 
term without explanation, presuming it to be known to 
those whom they addressed. Hence these ignorant 
readers caught at the last result of the phrase ' im- 
plicit faith' rightly, truly supposing it to imply a 
resigned and unquestioning faith ; but they missed the 
whole immediate cause of meaning by which only the 
word ' implicit' could ever have been entitled to ex- 
press that result. 

1 have allowed myself to say so much on this word 
' implicit,' because the history of the mode by which 
its true meaning was lost applies almost to all other 
corrupted words — mutatis mutandis : and the amount 
of it may be collected into this formula, — that the 
result of the word is apprehended and retained, but the 
schematismus by which that result was ever reached is 
lost. This is the brief theory of all corruption of 
words. The word schematismus I have unwillingly 
used because no other expresses my meaning. So 
great and extensive a doctrine however lurks in this 
word, that I defer the explanation of it to a separate 
article. Meantime a passable sense of the word will 
occur to every body who reads Greek. I now go on 
to a few more instances of words that have forfeited 
their original meaning through the ignorance of those 
who used them. 



280 ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 

' Punctual.^ This word is now confined to the 
meagre denoting of accuracy in respect to time — 
fidelity to the precise moment of an appointment. 
But originally it was just as often, and just as reason- 
ably, applied to space as to time ; ' I cannot punctually 
determine the origin of the Danube ; but I know in 
general the district in which it rises, and that its 
fountain is near that of the Rhine.' Not only, however, 
was it applied to time and space, but it had a laige 
and very elegant figurative use. Thus in the History 
of the Royal Society by Sprat (an author who was 
finical and nice in his use of words) — I remember a 
sentence to this effect : ' the Society gave punctual 
directions for the conducting of experiments ; ' i. e. 
directions which descended to the minutiae and lowest 
details. Again in the once popular romance of Paris- 
mus Prince of Bohemia — ' She ' (I forget who) ' made 
a punctual relation of the whole matter ; ' i. e. a rela- 
tion which was perfectly circumstantial and true to 
the minutest features of the case. 



DRYDEN*S HEXASTICH. 



It is a remarkable fact, that the very finest epigram 
in the English language happens also to be the worst. 
Epigram I call it in the austere Greek sense ; which 
thus far resembled our modern idea of an epigram, that 
something pointed and allied to wit was demanded in 
the management of the leading thought at its close, 
but otherwise nothing tending towards the comic or 
the ludicrous. The epigram I speak of is the well- 
known one of Dryden dedicated to the glorification 
of Milton. It is irreproachable as regards its severe 
brevity. Not one word is there that could be spared ; 
nor could the wit of man have cast the movement of 
the thought into a better mould. There are three 
couplets. In the first couplet we are reminded of the 
fact that this earth had, in three different stages of its 
development, given birth to a trinity of transcendent 
poets ; meaning narrative poets, or, even more nar- 
rowly, epic poets. The duty thrown upon the second 
couplet is to characterize these three poets, and to 
value them against each other, but in such terms as 
that, whilst nothing less than the very highest praise 
should be assigned to the two elder poets in this 
24 [281] 



282 



deyden's hexastich. 



trinity — the Greek a«d the Roman — nevertheless, 
by some dexterous artifice, a higher praise than the 
highest should suddenly unmask itself, and drop, as 
It were, like a diadem from the clouds upon the brows 
of their English competitor. In the kind of expectation 
raised, and in the extreme difficulty of adequately 
meeting this expectation, there was pretty much the 
same challenge offered to Dryden as was offered, 
somewhere about the same time, to a British ambassa- 
dor when dining with his political antagonists. One 
of these — the ambassador of France — had proposed 
to drink his master, Louis XIV., under the character 
of the sun, who dispensed life and light to the whole 
political system. To this there was no objection ; 
and immediately, by way of intercepting any further 
draughts upon the rest of the solar system, the Dutch 
ambassador rose, and proposed the health of their high 
mightinesses the Seven United States, as the moon and 
six * planets, who gave light in the absence of the sun. 
The two foreign ambassadors. Monsieur and Mynheer, 
secretly enjoyed the mortification of their English 
brother, who seemed to be thus left in a state of 
bankruptcy, ' no funds ' being available for retaliation, 
or so they fancied. But suddenly our British repre 
sentative toasted his master as Joshua, the son of Nun 
that made the sun and moon stand still. All hao 
seemed lost for England, when in an instant of time 
both her antagonists were checkmated. Dryden as- 
sumed something of the same position. He gave 
away the supreme jewels in his exchequer ; apparently 
nothing remained behind ; all was exhausted. To 



* * Six planets :' — No more had then been discovered. 



DRYDEN's HEXASTICH. 283 

Homer he gave A ; to Virgil he gave B ; and, behold ! 
after these were given away, there remained nothing 
at all that would not have been a secondary praise. 
But, in a moment of time, by giving A and B to 
Milton, at one sling of his victorious arm he raised 
him above Homer by the whole extent of B, and above 
Virgil by the whole extent of A. This felicitous eva- 
sion of the embarrassment is accomplished in the 
second couplet ; and, finally, the third couplet winds 
up with graceful effect, by making a resume, or recapi- 
tulation of the logic concerned in the distribution of 
prizes just announced. Nature, he says, had it not in 
her power to provide a third prize separate from the 
first and second ; her resource was, to join the first 
and second in combination : ' To make a third, she 
joined the former two.' 

Such is the abstract of this famous epigram ; and, 
judged simply by the outline and tendency of the 
thought, it merits all the vast popularity which it has 
earned. But in the meantime, it is radically vicious 
as regards the filling in of this outline ; for the par- 
ticular quality in which Homer is accredited with the 
pre-eminence, viz., loftiness of thought, happens to be 
a mere variety of expression for that quality, viz. 
majesty, in which the pre-eminence is awarded to 
Virgil. Homer excels Virgil in the very point in 
which lies Virgil's superiority to Homer; and that 
synthesis, by means of which a great triumph is 
reserved to Milton, becomes obviously impossible, 
when it is perceived that the supposed analytic 
elements of this synthesis are blank reiterations of 
each other 

Exceedingly strikmg it is, that a thought should 



284 dryden's hexastich. 

have prospered for one hundred and seventy years, 
which, on the slightest steadiness of examination, turns 
out to be no thought at all, but mere blank vacuity. 
There is, however, this justification of the case, that 
the mould, the set of channels, into which the metal of 
the thought is meant to run, really has the felicity 
which it appears to have : the form is perfect ; and it 
is merely in the matter^ in the accidental filling up of 
the mould, that a fault has been committed. Had the 
Virgilian point of excellence been loveliness instead of 
majesty, or any word whatever suggesting the common 
antithesis of sublimity and beauty ; or had it been 
power on the one side, matched against grace on 
the other, the true lurking tendency of the thought 
would have been developed, and the sub-conscious 
purpose of the epigram would have fulfilled itself to 
the letter. 

N. B. — It is not meant that loftiness of thought 
and majesty are expressions so entirely interchange- 
able, as that no shades of difference could be sug- 
gested ; it is enough that these ' shades ' are not 
substantial enough, or broad enough, to support the 
weight of opposition which the epigram assigns to 
them. Grace and elegance, for instance, ai'e far from 
being in all relations synonymous ; but they are so to 
the full extent of any purposes concerned in this 
epigram. Nevertheless, it is probable enough that 
Dryden had moving in his thoughts a relation of the 
word majesty, which, if developed, would have done 
justice to his meaning. It was, perhaps, the decorum 
and sustained dignity of the composition — the work- 
manship apart from the native grandeur of the ma- 
terials — the majestic style of the artistic treatment as 



dryden's hexastich. 285 

distinguished from the original creative power — which 
Drydcn, the translator of the Roman poet, familiar 
therefore with his weakness and with his strength, 
meant in this place to predicate as characteristically 
observable in Virjiil. 



POPE'S RETORT UPON ADDISON. 

There is nothing extraordinary, or that could merit 
a special notice, in a simple case of oversight, or in a 
blunder, though emanating from the greatest of poets. 
But such a case challenges and forces our attention, 
when we know that the particular passage in which it 
occurs was wrought and burnished with excessive 
pains ; or (which in this case is also known) when 
that particular passage is pushed into singular promi- 
nence as having obtained a singular success. In no 
part of his poetic mission did Pope so fascinate the 
gaze of his contemporaries as in his functions of 
satirist ; which functions, in his latter years, absorbed 
all other functions. And one reason, I believe, why 
it was that the interest about Pope decayed so rapidly 
after his death (an accident somewhere noticed by 
Wordsworth), must be sought in the fact, that the most 
stinging of his personal allusions, by which he had 
given salt to his later writings, were continually losing 
their edge, and sometimes their intelligibility, as Pope's 
own contemporary generation was dying off. Pope 
alleges it as a palliation of his satiric malice, that it had 
been forced from him in the way of retaliation ; for- 
getting that such a plea wilfully abjures the grandest 
justification of a satirist, viz., the deliberate assump- 

[286] 



pope's retort upon ADDISON. 28T 

tion of the character as something corresponding to 
the prophet's mission amongst the Hebrews. It is no 
longer the facit indignatio versum. Pope's satire, 
where even it was most effective, was personal and 
vindictive, and upon that argument alone could not be 
pliilosophic. Foremost in the order of his fulminations 
stood, and yet stands, the bloody castigation by which, 
according to his own pretence, he warned and menaced 
(but by which, in simple truth, he executed judgment 
upon) his false friend, Addison. 

To say that this drew vast rounds of applause upon 
its author, and frightened its object into deep silence 
for the rest of his life, like the Quos ego of angry 
Neptune, sufficiently argues that the verses must have 
ploughed as deeply as the Russian knout. Vitriol 
could not scorch more fiercely. And yet the whole 
passage rests upon a blunder ; and the blunder is so 
broad and palpable, that it implies instant forgetfulness 
both in the writer and the reader. The idea which 
furnishes the basis of the passage is this : that the 
conduct ascribed to Addison is in its own nature so 
despicable, as to extort laughter by its primary im- 
pulse ; but that this laughter changes into weeping, 
when we come to understand that the person concerned 
in this delinquency is Addison. The change, the 
transfiguration, in our mood of contemplating the 
offence, is charged upon the discovery which we are 
supposed to make as to the person of the offender ; 
tliat which by its baseness had been simply comic 
when imputed to some corresponding author, passes 
into a tragic coup-de-lhe.atre^ when it is suddenly traced 
back to a man of original genius. The whole, there- 
fore, of this effect is made to depend upon the sudden 



288 pope's retokt upon addison. 

scenical transition from a supposed petty criminal to 
one of higii distinction. And, meantime, no such stago 
effect had been possible, since the knowledge that a 
man of genius was the offender had been what we 
started with from the beginning. ' Our laughter is 
changed to tears,' says Pope, ' as soon as we discover 
that the base act had a noble author.' And, behold ! 
the initial feature in the whole description of the case 
is, that the libeller was one whom ' true genius fired : ' 

♦ Peace to all sucli ! But were there one whose mind 
True genius fires,' &c. 

Before the offence is described, the perpetrator is 
already characterized as a man of genius : and, in 
spite of that knowledge, we laugh. But suddenly our 
mood changes, and we weep, but why ? I beseech you. 
Simply because we have ascertained the author to be 
a man of genius. 

' Who would not laugh, if such a man there be ? 
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he ? ' 

The sole reason for weeping is something that we 
knew already before we began to laugh. 

It would not be right in logic, in fact, it would be a 
mis-classification, if I should cite as at all belonging to 
the same group several passages in Milton that come 
very near to Irish bulls, by virtue of distorted language 
One reason against such a classification would lie pre- 
cisely in that fact — viz., that the assimilation to the 
category of bulls lurks in the verbal expression, and 
not (as in Pope's case) amongst the conditions, of the 
thought. And a second reason would lie in the strange 
circumstance, that Milton had not fallen into this snare 
of diction through any carelessness or oversight, but 



POPF's EETORT upon ADDISON. 289 

with his eyes wide open, deliberately avowing his error 
as a special elegance ; repeating it ; and well aware 
of splendid Grecian authority for his error, if anybody 
sliould be bold enough to call it an error. Everj 
reader must be aware of the case — 

• Adam the goodliest man of men since born 
His sons ; the fairest of her daughters Eve ' — 

which makes Adam one of his own sons, Eve one of 
her own daughters. This, however, is authorized by 
Grecian usage in the severest writers. Neither can it 
be alleged that these might be bold poetic expressions, 
harmonizing with the Grecian idiom ; for Poppo has 
illustrated this singular form of expression in a prose- 
writer, as philosophic and austere as Thucydides ; a 
form which (as it olTends against logic) must offend 
equally in all languages. Some beauty must have 
been described in the idiom, such as atoned for its 
solecism : for Milton recurs to the same idiom, and 
under the same entire freedom of choice, elsewhere ; 
particularly in this instance, which has not been pointed 
out : ' And never,' says Satan to the abhon-ed phan- 
toms of Sin and Death, when crossing his path, 

• And never saw till now 
Sight more detestable than him and thee.' 

Now, therefore, it seems, he had seen a sight more 
detestable than this very sight. He now looked upon 
something more hateful than X Y Z. What was it ? 
It was X Y Z. 

But the authority of Milton, backed by that of in- 
solent Greece, would prove an overmatch for the 
logic of centuries. And I withdraw, therefore, from 
the rash attempt to quarrel with this sort of bull, in* 
25 



290 pope's eetort upon addison. 

volving Itself in the verbal expression. But the 
following, which lies rooted in the mere facts and 
incidents, is certainly the most extraordinary practical 
bull 1 that all literature can furnish. And a stranger 
thing, perhaps, than the oversight itself lies in this — 
that not any critic throughout Europe, two only ex- 
cepted, but has failed to detect a blunder so memora- 
ble. All the rampant audacity of Bentley — ' slashing 
Bentley ' — all the jealous malignity of Dr. Johnson — 
who hated Milton without disguise as a republican, but 
secretly and under a mask would at any rate have 
hated him from jealousy of his scholarship — had not 
availed to sharpen these practised and these interested 
eyes into the detection of an oversight which argues a 
sudden Lethean forgetfulness on the part of Milton ; 
and m many generations of readers, however alive and 
awake with malice, a corresponding forgetfulness not 
less astonishing. Two readers only I have ever heard 
of that escaped this lethargic inattention ; one of which 
two is myself; and I ascribe my success partly to good 
luck, but partly to some merit on my own part in 
having cultivated a habit of systematically accurate 
reading. If I read at all, I make it a duty to read 
truly and faithfully. I profess allegiance for the time 
to the man whom I undertake to study ; and I am as 
loyal to all the engagements involved in such a con- 
tract, as if I had come under a sacramenlum militare. 
So it was that, whilst yet a boy, I came to perceive, 
with a wonder not yet exhausted, that unaccountable 
blunder which Milton has committed in the main nar- 
rative on which the epic fable of the ' Paradise Lost ' 
turns as its hinges. And many a year afterwards I 
found that Paul Richter, whose vigilance nothing es- 



pope's retort upon ADDISON. 291 

caped, who carried with him through life ' the eye of 
the hawk, and the fire tlierein,' had not failed to make 
the same discovery. It is this : The archangel Satan 
has designs upon man ; he meditates his ruin ; and it 
is known that he does. Specially to counteract these 
designs, and for no other purpose whatever, a choir 
of angelic police is stationed at the gates of Paradise, 
having (I repeat) one sole commission, viz., to keep 
watch and ward over the threatened safety of the 
newly created human pair. Even at the very first 
this duty is neglected so thoroughly, that Satan gains 
access without challenge or suspicion. That is awful : 
for, ask yourself, reader, how a constable or an in- 
spector of police would be received who had been 
stationed at No. 6, on a secret information, and spent 
the night in making love at No. 15. Through the 
regular surveillance at the gates, Satan passes without 
objection ; and he is first of all detected by a purely 
accidental collision during the rounds of the junior 
angels. The result of this collision, and of the exam- 
mation which follows, is what no reader can ever for- 
get — so unspeakable is the grandeur of that scene 
between the two hostile archangels, when the Fiend 
(so named at the moment under the fine machinery 
used by Milton for exalting or depressing the ideas of 
his nature) finally takes his flight as an incarnation 
of darkness. 

• And fled 
Murmuring ; and with him fled the shades of night. 

The darkness flying with him, naturally we have the 
feeling that he is the darkness, and that all darkness 
has some essential relation to Satan. 

But now, having thus witnessed his terrific expulsion, 



292 pope's retort upon adpison. 

naturally we ask what was the sequel. Four books, 
however, are interposed before we reach the answer 
to that question. This is the reason that we fail to 
remark the extraordinary oversight of Milton. Dis- 
located from its immediate plan in the succession of 
incidents, that sequel eludes our notice, which else and 
in its natural place would have shocked us beyond 
measure. The simple abstract of the whole story is, 
that Satan, being ejected, and sternly charged under 
Almighty menaces not to intrude upon the young 
Paradise of God, ' rides with darkness ' for exactly one 
week, and, having digested his wrath rather than his 
fears on the octave of his solemn banishment, without 
demur, or doubt, or tremor, back he plunges into the 
very centre of Eden. On a Friday, suppose, he is 
expelled through the main entrance : on the Friday 
following he re-enters upon the forbidden premises 
through a clandestine entrance. The upshot is, that 
the heavenly police suffer, in the first place, the one 
sole enemy, who was or could be the object of their 
vigilance, to pass without inquest or suspicion ; thus 
they inaugurate their task ; secondly, by the merest 
accident (no thanks to their fidelity) they detect him, 
and with awful adjui'ations sentence him to perpetual 
banishment ; but, thirdly, on his immediate return, in 
utter contempt of their sentence, they ignore him 
altogether, and apparently act upon Dogberry's di- 
rection, that, upon meeting a thief, the police may 
suspect him to be no true man ; and, with such man- 
ner of men, the less they meddle or make, the more 
it will be for their honesty. 



NOTE. 



Note 1. Page 290. 

It is strange, or rather it is not strange, considering the 
feebleness of that lady in such a field, that Miss Edgeworth 
always ftincied herself to have caught Milton in a bull, under 
circumstances which, whilst leaving the shadow of a bull, effec- 
tually disown the substance. • And in the lowest deep a lower 
deep still opens to devour me.' This is the passage denounced 
by Miss Edgeworth. ' If it was already the lowest deep,' said 
the fair lady, ' how the deuce (no, perhaps it might be / that 
said ' how the deuce ') could it open into a lower deep ? ' Yes, 
how could it ? In carpentry, it is clear to my mind that it could 
not. But, in cases of deep imaginative feeling, no phenomenon 
is more natural than precisely this never-ending growth of one 
colossal grandeur chasing and surmounting another, or of abysses 
that swallowed up abysses. Persecutions of this class oftentimes 
are amongst the symptoms of fever, and amongst the inevitable 
spontaneities of nature. Other people I have known who were 
inclined to class amongst bulls Milton's all-famous expression 
of * darkness visible,' whereas it is not even a bold or daring ex- 
pression ; it describes a pure optical experience of very common 
occurrence There are two separate darknesses or obscurities : 
first, that obscurity by which you see dimly ; and secondly, that 
obscurity which you see. The first is the atmosphere through 
which vision is performed, and, therefore, part of the subjective 
conditiona essential to the act of seeing. The second is the object 

[293] 



294 NOTE. 

of your sight. In a glass-house at night illuminated by a sullen 
fire in one corner, but else dark, you see the darkness massed in 
the rear as a black object. That is the ' visible darkness.' And 
on the other hand, the murky atmosphere between you and the 
distant rear is not the object, but the medium, through or athwart 
which you descry the black masses. The first darkness is sub- 
jective darkness ; that is, a darkness in your own eye, and 
entangled with your very faculty of vision. The second darkness 
is perfectly diiferent : it is objective darkness ; that is to say, 
not any darkness which affects or modifies your faculty of seeing 
either for better or worse ; but a darkness which is the object 
of your vision ; a darkness which you see projected from your- 
self as a massy volume of blackness, and projected, possibly, to a 
vast distance. 



1 



MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by 

TiCKNOR AND FlELDS, 

la the Clerk's Office of the District Lioart of tiie District of MassacbuBettii 



CONTENTS. 

Om the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth, . . 9 
Murder, Considered as one of the Fine Arts, . 17 
Supplementary Paper on Murder, . . . .58 

Joan of Arc, .81 

The English Mail-Coach, 125 

the glort of motion, 125 

THE vision of SUDDEN DEATH, .... 157 

dream-fugue, 180 

Dinner, Real, and Reputed, ..... 197 

Orthographic Mutineers, 243 

Sortilege on Behalf of the Glasgow Athen^^um, . 2G3 



MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



OK 

THE KNOCKING AT THE GATE 

IN MACBETH. 

From my boyish days I had always felt a great 
perplexity on one point in Macbeth. It was this : the 
knocking at the gate, which succeeds to the murder of 
Duncan, produced to my feelings an effect for which I 
never could account. The effect was, that it reflected 
back upon the murder a peculiar awfulness and a depth 
of solemnity ; yet, however obstinately I endeavored 
with my understanding to comprehend this, for many 
years I never co\ild see why it should produce such an 
effect. 

Here I pause for one moment to exhort the reader 
never to pay any attention to his understanding, when 
it stands in opposition to any other faculty of his mind. 
The mere understanding, however useful and indispen- 
sable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind, and 
the most to be distn»»^d ; and yet the great majority 

[9] 



10 MACBETH. 

of people trust to nothing else ; which, may do for 
ordinary life, bnt not for philosophical purposes. Of 
this out of ten thousand instances that I might produce, 
I will cite one. Ask of any person Avhatsoever, who is 
pot previously prepared for the demand by a knowledge 
of perspective, to draw in the rudest way the com- 
monest appearance which depends upon the laws of 
that science ; as, for instance, to represent the effect of 
two walls standing at right angles to each other, or 
the appearance of the houses on each side of a street, 
as seen by a person looking down the street from one 
extremity. Now, in all cases, unless the person has 
happened to observe in pictures how it is that artists 
produce these effects, he will be utterly unable to make 
the smallest approximation to it. Yet why ? For he 
has actually seen the effect every day of his life. The 
reason is — that he allows his understanding to over- 
rule his eyes. His understanding, which includes no 
intuitive knowledge of the laws of vision, can furnish 
him with no reason why a line which is known and can 
be proved to be a horizontal line, should not appear a 
horizontal line ; a line that made any angle with the 
perpendicular, less than a right angle, would seem to 
him to indicate that his houses were all tumbling down 
together. Accordingly, he makes the line of his houses 
a horizontal line, and fails, of course, to produce the 
effect demanded. Here, then, is one instance out of 
many, in which not only the understanding is allowed 
to overrule the eyes, but where the understanding is 
positively allowed to obliterate the eyes, as it were, for 
not only does the man believe the evidence of his 
understanding, in opposition to that of his eyes, but, 
(what is monstrous !) the idiot is not aware that his 



MACBETH. 11 

ej'es ever gave sucli evidence. He does no', know that 
he has seen (and therefore quoad his consciousness has 
not seen) that which he has seen every day of his 
life. 

But to return from this digression, my understanding 
could furnish no reason why the knocking at the gate 
in ^Macbeth should produce any effect direct or re- 
flected. In fact, my understanding said positively that 
it could not produce any effect. But I knew better ; I 
felt that it did ; and I waited and clung to the problem 
until further knowledge should enable me to solve it. 
At length, in 1812, Mr. Williams made his debut on 
the stage of Ratcliffe Highway, and executed those 
unparalleled murders which have procured for him 
such a brilliant and undying reputation. On which 
murders, by the way, I must observe, that in one 
respect they have had an ill effect, by making the 
connoisseur in murder very fastidious in his taste, and 
dissatisfied by anything that has since been done in 
that line. All other murders look pale by the deep 
crimson of his ; and, as an amateur once said to me 
in a querulous tone, ' There has been absolutely 
nothing doing since his time, or nothing that's worth 
Bpcaking of.' But this is wrong ; for it is unreasonable 
to expect all men to be great artists, and born with the 
genius of Mr. Williams. Now it will be remembered, 
that in the first of these murders, (that of the Marrs,) 
the same incident (of a knocking at the door, soon after 
the work of extermination was complete) did actually 
occur, which the genius of Shakspeare has invented ; 
and all good judges, and the most eminent dilettanti, 
acknowledged the felicity of Shakspcarc's suggestion, 
as 800U as it was actually realized. Here, then, was a 



12 MACBETH. 

fresh proof that I was right in relying on my own feel- 
ing, in opposition to my understanding ; and I again set 
myself to study the problem ; at length I solved it to 
my own satisfaction ; and my solution is this. Murder, 
in ordinary cases, where the sympathy is wholly di- 
rected to the case of the murdered person, is an incident 
of coarse and vulgar horror ; and for this reason, that 
it flings the interest exclusively upon the natural but 
ignoble instinct by which we cleave to life ; an in- 
stinct, which, as being indispensable to the primal 
law of self-preservation, is the same in kind, (though 
different in degree,) amongst all living creatures ; this 
instinct, therefore, because it annihilates all distinc- 
tions, and degrades the greatest of men to the level of 
' the poor beetle that we tread on,' exhibits human na- 
ture in its most abject and humiliating attitude. Such 
an attitude would little suit the purposes of the poet. 
What then must he do ? He must throw the interest 
on the murderer. Our sympathy must be with liim ; 
(of course I mean a sympathy of comprehension, a 
sympathy by which we enter into his feelings, and are 
made to understand them, — not a sympathy ^ of pity 
or approbation.) In the murdered person, all strife 
of thought, all flux and reflux of passion and of pur- 

* It seems almost ludicrous to guard and explain my use of a 
word, in a situation where it would naturally explain itself. 
But it has become necessary to do so, in consequence of the 
unscholarlike use of the word sympathy, at present so general, 
by which, instead of taking it in its proper sense, as the act of 
reproducing in our minds the feelings of another, whether for 
hatred, indignation, love, pity, or approbation, it is made a 
mere synonyme of the word pity ; and hence, instead of saying 
' sympathy with another,' many writers adopt the monstrous 
barbarism of ' sympathy /or another.' 



MACBETH. 13 

pose, are crushed by one overwhelming panic ; the 
fear of instant death smites him ' with its petrific mace.' 
But in the murderer, such a murderer as a poet 
will condescend to, there must be raging some great 
storm of passion, — jealousy, ambition, vengeance, 
hatred, — which will create a hell within him ; and 
into this hell we are to look. 

In Macbeth, for the sake of gratifying his own enor- 
mous and teeming faculty of creation, Shakspeare haa 
introduced two murderers ; and, as usual in his hands, 
they are remarkably discriminated : but, though in 
Macbeth the strife of mind is greater than in his wife, 
the tiger spirit not so awake, and his feelings caught 
chiefly by contagion from her, — yet, as both were 
finally involved in the guilt of murder, the murderous 
mind of necessity is finally to be presumed in both. 
This was to be expressed ; and on its own account, as 
well as to make it a more proportionable antagonist to 
the unoffending nature of their victim, ' the gracious 
Duncan,' and adequately to expound ' the deep damna- 
tion of his taking off,' this was to be expressed with 
peculiar energy. We were to be made to feel that the 
human nature, i. e., the divine nature of love and 
mercy, spread through the hearts of all creatures, and 
seldom utterly withdrawn from man, — was gone, van- 
ished, extinct ; and that the fiendish nature had taken 
its place. And, as this effect is marvellously accom- 
plished in the dialogues and soliloquies themselves, so 
it is finally consummated by the expedient under con- 
sideration ; and it is to this that I now solicit the 
reader's attention. If the reader has ever witnessed a 
wife, daughter, or sister, in a fainting fit, he may chance 
to have observed that the most affecting moment in 



14 MACBETH. 

sucli a spectacle, is that in wMch a sigh and a stirring 
announce the recommencement of suspended life. Or, 
if the reader has ever been present in a vast metropolis, 
on the day when some great national idol was carried 
in funeral pomp to his grave, and chancing to walk 
near the course through which it passed, has felt pow- 
erfully, in the silence and desertion of the streets, and 
in the stagnation of ordinary business, the deep interest 
which at that moment was possessing the heart of man, 
— if all at once he should hear the death- like stillness 
broken up by the sound of wheels rattling away from 
the scene, and making known that the transitory vision 
Avas dissolved, he will be aware that at no moment was 
his sense of the complete suspension and pause in 
ordinary human concerns so full and affecting, as at 
that moment when the suspension ceases, and the goings- 
on of human life are suddenly resumed. All action 
in any direction is best expounded, measured, and made 
apprehensible, by reaction. Now apply this to the case 
in Macbeth. Here, as I have said, the retiring of the 
human heart, and the entrance of the fiendish heart, 
was to be expressed and made sensible. Another 
Avorld has stept in ; and the murderers are taken out 
of the region of human things, human purposes, human 
desires. They are transfigured : Lady Macbeth is 
' unsexed ; ' Macbeth has forgot that he was born of 
woman ; both are conformed to the image of devils ; 
and the world of devils is suddenly revealed. But how 
shall this be conveyed and made palpable ? In order 
that a new world may step in,, this world must for a 
time disappear. The murderers, and the murder, must 
be insulated — '■ cut off by an immeasurable gulph from 
the ordinary tide and succes.*ion of human affairs — 



MACBETH. 15 

locked up and sequestered in some deep recess ; we 
must be made sensible tbat the world of ordinary life 
is suddenly arrested — laid asleep — tranced — racked 
into a dread armistice ; time must be annihilated ; rela- 
tion to things without abolished; and all must pass 
sclf-mthdrawn into a deep syncope and suspension of 
earthly passion. Hence it is, that when the deed is 
done, when the work of darkness is perfect, then the 
world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in the 
clouds ; the knocking at the gate is heard ; and it makes 
known audibly that the reaction has commenced : the 
human has made its reflux upon the fiendish ; the 
pulses of life are beginning to beat again ; and the re- 
establishment of the goings-on of the world in which 
wc live, first makes us profoundly sensible of the awful 
parenthesis that had suspended them. 

O, mighty poet ! Thy works are not as those of 
other men, simply and merely great works of art ; but 
are also like the phenomena of nature, like the sun 
and the sea, the stars and the flowers, — like frost and 
snow, rain and dew, haU-storm and thunder, which are 
to be studied with entire submission of our own fac- 
ulties, and in the perfect faith that in them there can 
be no too much or too little, nothing useless or inert, — 
but that, the further we press in our discoveries, the 
more we shall see proofs of design and self-supporting 
arrangement where the careless eye had seen nothing 
but accident ! 



ON MURDER, 

CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS. 

ADVKETISEMENT OP A MAN MOEBEDLT VIRTUOUS. 

Most of us, who read books, have probably heard 
of a Society for the Promotion of Vice, of the Hell- 
Fire Club, founded in the last century by Sir Francis 
D , &c. At Brighton I think it was, that a So- 
ciety was formed for the Suppression of Virtue. That 
society was itself suppressed; but I am sorry to say 
that another exists in London, of a character still more 
atrocious. In tendency, it may be denominated a So- 
ciety for the Encouragement of Murder ; but, accord- 
ing to their own delicate evtpti^nafibg, it is styled, The 
Society of Connoisseurs in Murder. They profess to 
be curious in homicide ; amateurs and dilettanti in the 
various modes of bloodshed ; and, in short, Murder- 
Fanciers. Every fresh atrocity of that class which the 
police annals of Europe bring up, they meet and criti- 
cize as they would a picture, statue, or other work of 
art. But I need not trouble myself with any attempt 
to describe the spirit of their proceedings, as the 
reader will collect that much better from one of the 
Monthly Lectures read before the society last year. 
This has fallen into my hands accidentally, in spite of 
2 [17] 



18 MURDEK. 

all tlie vigilance exercised to keep their transactiong 
from tlie public eye. The publication of it will alarm 
them ; and my purpose is, that it should. For I 
would much rather put them down quietly, by an ap- 
peal to public opinion, than by such an exposure of 
names as would follow an appeal to Bow Street; 
which last appeal, however, if this should fail, I must 
really resort to. For my intense virtue will not put 
up with such things in a Christian land. Even in a 
heathen land, the toleration of murder — viz., in the 
dreadful shows of the amphitheatre — was felt by a 
Christian writer to be the most crying reproach of the 
public morals. This writer was Lactantius ; and with 
his words, as singularly applicable to the present occa- 
sion, I shall conclude : — ' Quid tam horribile,' says 
he, ' tam tetrum, quam hominis trucidatio ? Ideo 
severissimis legibus vita nostra munitur ; ideo bella 
execrabilia sunt. Invenit tamen consuetudo quatenus 
homicidium sine hello ac sine legibus faciat : et hoc 
sibi voluptas quod scelus vindicavit. Quod si interesse 
homicidio sceleris conscientia est, — et eidem facinori 
spectator obstrictus est cui et admissor ; ergo et in his 
gladiatorum csedibus non minus cruore profunditur 
qui spectat, quam ille qui facit : nee potest esse im- 
munis a sanguine qui voluit effundi ; aut videri non 
interfecisse, qui interfectori et favit et prcemium pos- 
tulavit.' ' What is so dreadful,' says Lactantius, 
' what so dismal and revolting, as the murder of a 
human creature ? Therefore it is, that life for us is 
protected by laws the most rigorous : therefore it is, 
that wars are objects of execration. And yet the tra- 
ditional usage of Rome has devised a mode of author- 
izing murder apart from war, and in defiance of law , 



MURDER. 19 

and tlic demands of taste (voluptas) are now become 
the same as those of abandoned guilt.' Let the So- 
ciety of Gentlemen Amateurs consider this ; and let 
me call their especial attention to the last sentence, 
which is so weighty, that I shall attempt to convey it 
in English : ' Now, if merely to be present at a mur- 
der fastens on a man the character of an accomplice ; 
if barely to be a spectator involves us in one common 
guilt with the perpetrator, it follows, of necessity, 
that, in these murders of the amphitheatre, the hand 
which inflicts the fatal blow is not more deeply im- 
brued in blood than his who passively looks on ; 
neither can he be clear of blood who has countenanced 
its shedding ; nor that man seem other than a participa- 
tor in mui'der, who gives his applause to the murderer, 
and calls for prizes on his behalf.' The ^ prmmia 
postuJavit ' I have not yet heard charged upon the 
Gentlemen Amateurs of London, though undoubtedly 
their proceedings tend to that ; but the ' interfector% 
far it' is implied in the very title of this association, 
and expressed in every line of the lecture which fol- 
lows. X. Y. Z. 

LECTURE. 

Gentlemen, — I have had the honor to be ap. 
pointed by your committee to the trying task of read- 
ing the Williams' Lecture on Murder, considered as 
one of the Fine Arts ; a task which might be easy 
enough three or four centuries ago, when the ait was 
little understood, and few great models had been ex- 
hibited ; but in this age, when masterpieces of excel- 
lence have been executed by professional men, it must 



20 MTJEDBK. 

be evident, that in the style of criticism applied to 
them, the public will look for something of a corres- 
ponding improvement. Practice and theory must 
advance pari passu. People begin to see that some- 
thing more goes to the composition of a fine murder 
than two blockheads to kill and be killed — a knife — 
a purse — and a dark lane. Design, gentlemen, 
grouping, light and shade, poetry, sentiment, are now 
deemed indispensable to attempts of this nature. Mr. 
"Williams has exalted the ideal of murder to all of us ; 
and to me, therefore, in particular, has deepened the 
arduousness of my task. Like ^schylus or Milton in 
poetry, like Michael Angelo in painting, he has carried 
his art to a point of colossal sublimity ; and, as Mr. 
Wordsworth observes, has in a manner ' created the 
taste by which he is to be enjoyed.' To sketch the 
history of the art, and to examine its principles criti- 
cally, now remains as a duty for the connoisseur, and 
for judges of quite another stamp from his Majesty's 
Judges of Assize. 

Before I begin, let me say a word or two to certain 
prigs, who afi"ect to speak of our society as if it were 
in some degree immoral in its tendency. Immoral ! 
Jupiter protect me, gentlemen, what is it that people 
mean ? I am for morality, and always shall be, and 
for virtue, and all that ; and I do affirm, and always 
shall (let what will come of it), that murder is an im- 
proper line of conduct, highly improper ; and I do 
not stick to assert, that any man who deals in murder, 
must have very incorrect ways of thinking, and truly 
inaccurate principles ; and so far from aiding and 
abetting him by pointing out his victim's hiding-place, 
as a great moralist "^ of Germany declared it to be every 



MUKDEB. 21 

good man's duty to do, I would subscribe one shilling 
and sixpence to have him apprehended, which is more 
by cighteonpence than the most eminent moralists have 
hitherto subscribed for that purpose. But what then? 
Everything in this world has two handles. Murder, 
for instance, may be laid hold of by its moral handle 
(as it generally is in the pulpit, and at the Old Bailey ) ; 
and that, I confess, is its weak side ; or it may also be 
treated cBstheticalJy, as the Germans call it — that ia, in 
relation to good taste. 

To illustrate this, I will urge the authority of three 
eminent persons; viz., S. T. Coleridge, Aristotle, and 
Mr. Howship the surgeon. To begin with S. T. C. 
One night, many years ago, I Avas drinking tea with 
him in Berners Street (which, by the way, for a short 
street, has been uncommonly fruitful in men of genius). 
Others were there besides myself; and, amidst some 
carnal considerations of tea and toast, we were all im- 
bibing a dissertation on Plotinus from the attic lips of 
S. T. C. Suddenly a cry arose of, " Fire — fire ! " 
upon which all of us, master and disciples, Plato and 
01 ntQt Tov nXuTwia, rushed out, eager for the spectacle. 
The fire was in Oxford Street, at a pianoforte-maker's ; 
and, as it promised to be a conflagration of merit, 
I was sorry that my engagements forced me away from 
Mr. Coleridge's party, before matters had come to a 
crisis. Some days after, meeting with my Platonic 
host, I reminded him of the case, and begged to know 
how that very promising exhibition had terminated. 
♦ Oh, sir,' said he, * it turned out so ill that we 
damned it unanimously.' Now, does any man sup- 
pose that Mr. Coleridge — who, for all he is too fat to 
be a person of active virtue, is undoubtedly a worthy 



22 HXTBDBB. 

Cliristian — that ttis good S. T. C, I say, was an in- 
cendiary, or capable of wisliing any ill to tlie poor man 
and his pianofortes (many of them, doubtless, with the 
additional keys) ? On the contrary, I know him to be 
that sort of man, that I durst stake my life upon it, he 
would have worked an engine in a case of necessity, 
although rather of the fattest for such fiery trials 
of his -virtue. But how stood the case ? Virtue 
was in no request. On the arrival of the fire-engines, 
morality had devolved wholly on the insurance office. 
This being the case, he had a right to gratify hia 
taste. He had left his tea. Was he to have nothing 
in return ? 

I contend that the most virtuous man, under the 
premises stated, was entitled to make a luxury of the 
fire, and to hiss it, as he would any other performance 
that raised expectations in the public mind which after- 
wards it disappointed. Again, to cite another great 
authority, what says the Stagirite ? He (in the Fifth 
Book, I think it is, of his Metaphysics) describes what 
he calls xKtnrlv ri2.tiov — i. e., a perfect thief; and as 
to Mr. Howship, in a work of his on Indigestion, he 
makes no scruple to talk with admiration of a certain 
ulcer which he had seen, and which he styles ' a beau- 
tiful ulcer.' Now, will any man pretend, that, ab- 
stractedly considered, a thief could appear to Aris- 
totle a perfect character, or that Mr. Howship could 
be enamored of an ulcer ? Aristotle, it is well 
known, was himself so very moral a character, that, 
not content with writing his Nichomachean Ethics, in 
one volume octavo, he also wrote another system, 
called Magna Moralia, or Big Ethics. Now, it is im- 
possible that a man who composes any ethics at all, 



HUBD£fi. 23 

big or little, should admire a thief per se ; and as to 
Mr. Howship, it well known that he makes war upon 
all ulcers, and, without suffering himself to be seduced 
by their charms, endeavors to banish them from the 
County of Middlesex. But the truth is, that, how- 
ever objectionable per se, yet, relatively to others of 
their class, both a thief and an ulcer may have infinite 
degrees of merit. They are both imperfections, it is 
true ; but, to be imperfect being their essence, the very 
greatness of their imperfection becomes their perfec- 
tion. Spartam nactus es, hanc exorna. A thief like 
Autolycus, or the once famous George Barrington, and 
a grim phagedaenic ulcer, superbly defined, and running 
regularly through all its natural stages, may no less 
justly be regarded as ideals after their kind, than the 
most faultless moss-rose amongst flowers, in its progress 
from bud to ' bright consunrmate flower ; ' or, amongst 
human flowers, the most magnificent young female, 
apparelled in the pomp of womanhood. And thus not 
only the ideal of an inkstand may be imagined (as Mr. 
Coleridge illustrated in his celebrated correspondence 
w^th Mr. Blackwood), in which, by the way, there is 
not so much, because an inkstand is a laudable 
sort of thing, and a valuable member of society ; 
but even imperfection itself may have its ideal or per- 
fect state. 

Really, gentlemen, I beg pardon for so much philo- 
sophy at one time ; and now let me apply it. When 
a murder is in the paulo-post-futurum tense — not 
done, not even (according to modern purism) leing 
done, but only going to be done — and a rumor of it 
comes to our ears, by all means let us treat it morally. 
But suppose it over and done, and that you can say of 



24 MTTKDEE. 

it, TirUegat, It is finislied, or (in that adamantine mo- 
lussus of Medea) iiyai^ai. Done it is : it is fait accom- 
pli ; suppose the poor murdered man to be out of Ms 
pain, and the rascal that did it off like a shot, nobody 
knows whither; suppose, lastly, that we have done 
our best, by putting out our legs, to trip up the fellow 
in his flight, but all to no purpose — ' abiit, evasit, 
excessit, erupit," &c. — why, then, I say, Avhat's the use 
of any more virtue ? Enough has been given to mo- 
rality ; now comes the turn of Taste and the Fine Arts. 
A sad thing it was, no doubt, very sad ; but we can't 
mend it. Therefore let us make the best of a bad mat- 
ter ; and, as it is impossible to hammer anything out 
of it for moral purposes, let us treat it aesthetically, 
and see if it will turn to account in that way. Such 
is the logic of a sensible man, and what follows ? "We 
dry up our tears, and have the satisfaction, perhaps, to 
discover that a transaction, which, morally considered, 
was shocking, and without a leg to stand upon, when 
tried by principles of Taste, turns out to be a very 
meritorious performance. Thus all the world is pleased ; 
the old proverb is justified, that it is an ill wind which 
blows nobody good ; the amateur, from looking bilious 
and sulky, by too close attention to virtue, begins to 
pick up his crumbs ; and general hilarity prevails. 
Virtue has had her day ; and henceforward. Virtu, so 
nearly the same thing as to differ only by a single letter 
— (which surely is not worth haggling or higgling 
about) — Virtu, I repeat, and Connoisseurship, have 
leave to provide for themselves. Upon this principle, 
gentlemen I propose to guide your studies, from Cain to 
Mr. Thurtell. Through this great gallery of murder, 
therefore, together let us wander hand in hand, in de- 



MXJRDEB. 25 

lighted admiration ; while I endeavor to point your 
attention to the objects of profitable criticism. 

The first murder is familiar to you all. As the in- 
ventor of murder, and the father of the art, Cain must 
have been a man of first-rate genius. All the Cains 
were men of genius. Tubal Cain invented tubes, I 
think, or some such thing. But, whatever might be 
the originality and genius of the artist, every art was 
then in its infancy, and the works must be criticized 
with a recollection of that fact. Even Tubal's work 
would probably be little approved at this day in Shef- 
field ; and therefore of Cain (Cain senior, I mean) it is 
no disparagement to say, that his performance was but 
Bo-so. Milton, however, is supposed to have thought 
differently. By his way of relating the case, it should 
seem to have been rather a pet murder with him, for 
he retouches it with an apparent anxiety for its pictur- 
esque effect : — 

' Whereat he inly raged; and, as they talk'd, 
Smote him into the midriff with a stone 
That beat out life : he fell; and, deadly pale, 
Groan'd out his soul with gushing blood effused.* 

Par. Lost, B. xi. 

Upon this, Richardson the painter, who had an eye 
for effbct, remarks as follows, in his ' Notes on Para- 
dise Lost,' p. 497 : — 'It has been thought,' says he, 
' that Cain beat (as the common saying is) the breath 
out of his brother's body with a great stone ; Milton 
gives in to this, with the addition, however, of a large 
wound.' In this place it was a judicious addition ; 
for the rudeness of the weapon, unless raised and en- 
riched by a warm, sanguinary coloring, has too much 
8 



26 MTJBDEB. 

of the naked air of the savage school ; as if the dc;ed 
were perpetrated by a Polypheme without science, pre- 
meditation, or anything but a mutton bone. How- 
ever, I am chiefly pleased with the improvement, as it 
implies that Milton was an amateur. As to Shak- 
speare, there never was a better ; witness his descrip- 
tion of the murdered Duncan, Banquo, &c. ; and, 
above all, witness his incomparable miniature, in 
* Henry VI.,' of the murdered Gloucester. ^ 

The foundation of the art having been once laid, it 
is pitiable to see how it slumbered without improve- 
ment for ages. In fact, I shall now be obliged to leap 
over all murders, sacred and profane, as utterly un- 
worthy of notice, until long after the Christian era. 
Greece, even in the age of Pericles, produced no mur- 
der, or at least none is recorded, of the slightest merit ; 
and Rome had too little originality of genius in any of 
the arts to succeed where her model failed her.^ In 
fact, the Latin language sinks under the very idea of 
murder. ' The man was murdered ; ' — how will this 
sound in Latin ? Interfectus est, interemptus est — 
which simply expresses a homicide ; and hence the 
Christian Latinity of the middle ages was obliged to 
introduce a new word, such as the feebleness of classic 
conceptions never ascended to. Murdratus est, says 
the sublimer dialect of the Gothic ages. Meantime, the 
Jewish school of murder kept alive whatever was yet 
known in the art, and gradually transferred it to the 
Western World. Indeed, the Jewish school was al- 
ways respectable, even in its medieval stages, as the 
case of Hugh of Lincoln shows, which was honored 
with the approbation of Chaucer, on occasion of another 
performance from the same school, which he puts into 
the mouth of the Lady Abbess. 



MTTEDEB. 27 

Recurring, however, for one moment, to classical 
antiquity, I cannot but think that Catiline, Clodius, 
and some of that coterie, would have made first-rate 
artists ; and it is on all accounts to be regretted, that 
the priggism of Cicero robbed his country of the only 
chance she had for distinction in this line. As the 
subject of a murder, no person could have answered 
better than himself. Oh Gemini ! how he would have 
howled with panic, if he had heard Cethegus under his 
bed. It would have been truly diverting to have lis- 
tened to him ; and satisfied I am, gentlemen, that he 
would have preferred the utile of creeping into a closet, 
or even into a cloaca, to the honestum of facing the bold 
artist. 

To come now to the dark ages — (by which wc that 
speak with precision mean, par excellence, the tenth 
century as a meridian line, and the two centuries im- 
mediately before and after, full midnight being from 
A. D. 888 to A. D. 1111) — these ages ought naturally 
to be favorable to the art of murder, as they were to 
church architecture, to stained glass, &c. ; and, ac- 
cordingly, about the latter end of this period, there 
arose a great character in our art, I mean the Old Man 
of the Mountains. He was a shining light, indeed, 
and I need not tell you, that the very word ' assassin ' 
is deduced from him. So keen an amateur was he, 
that on one occasion, when his own life Avas attempted 
by a favorite assassin, he was so much pleased with the 
talent shown, that, notwithstanding the failure of the 
artist, he created him a duke upon the spot, with re- 
mainder to the female line, and settled a pension 01 
him for three lives. Assassination is a branch of the 
art which demands a separate notice ; and it is possible 



] 



28 MUKDEB. 

that I may devote an entire lecture to .t. Mtantime, 
I shall only observe how odd it is, that this branch of 
the art has flourished by intermitting fits. It never 
rains, but it pours. Our own age can boast of some 
fine specimens, such, for instance, as Bellingham's 
affair with the prime minister Percival, the Due de 
Berri's case at the Parisian Opera House, the Mare- 
chal Bessieres' case at Avignon ; and about two and a 
half centuries ago, there was a most brilliant constella- 
tion of murders in this class. I need hardly say, that I 
I allude especially to those seven splendid works— » 
the assassinations of William I., of Orange ; of the 
three French Henries, viz., — Henri, Duke of Guise, 
that had a fancy for the throne of France ; of Henry III., 
last prince in the line of Valois, who then occupied 
that throne ; and finally of Henri IV., his brother-in- 
law, who succeeded to that throne as first prince in the 
line of Bourbon ; not eighteen years later came the 
5th on that roll, viz., that of our Duke of Buckingham, 
(which you will find excellently described in the letters 
published by Sir Henry Ellis, of the British Museum), 
6thly, of Gustavus Adolphus, and Vthly, of Wallen- 
stein. What a glorious Pleiad of murders ! And it 
increases one's admiration — that this bright constella- 
tion of artistic displays, comprehending 3 Majesties, 3 
Serene Highnesses, and 1 Excellency, all lay within so 
narrow a field of time as between A. D. 1588 and 1635. 
The King of Sweden's assassination, by the by, is 
doubted by many writers, Harte amongst others ; but 
they are wrong. He was murdered ; and I consider 
his murder unique in its excellence ; for he was mur- 
dered at noon-day, and on the field of battle — a fea- 
ture of original conception, which occurs in no other 



MTTKUER. 29 

woaIc of art that I remember. To conceive the idea of 
a secret murder on private account, as enclosed within 
a little parenthesis on a vast stage of public battle- 
carnage, is like Hamlet's subtle device of a tragedy 
within a tragedy. Indeed, all of these assassinations 
may be studied with profit by the advanced connois- 
seur. They are all of them exemplaria model murders, 
pattern murders, of which one may say, — 

* Nocturna, versate manu, versate diurna ; ' 

especially nocturna. 

In these assassinations of princes and statesmen, 
there is nothing to excite our wonder ; important 
changes often depend on their deaths ; and, from the 
eminence on which they stand, they are peculiarly ex- 
posed to the aim of every artist who happens to be 
possessed by the craving for sccnical effect. But there 
is another class of assassinations, which has prevailed 
from an early period of the seventeenth century, that 
really does surprise me : I mean the assassination of 
philosophers. For, gentlemen, it is a fact, that every 
philosopher of eminence for the two last centuries has 
either been murdered, or, at the least, been very near 
it ; insomuch, that if a man calls himself a philosopher, 
and never had his life attempted, rest assured there is 
nothing in him ; and against Locke's philosophy in 
particular, I think it an unanswerable objection (if we 
needed any), that, although he carried his throat about 
with him in this world for seventy-two years, no man 
ever condescended to cut it. As these cases of philos- 
ophers arc not much known, and are generally good 
and well composed in their circumstances, I shall here 
read an excursus on that subject, chiefly by way of 
ghowing my own learning. 



30 MITEDER. 

The first great philosoplier of the seventeenth cen- 
tury (if we except Bacon and Galileo) was Des Car- 
tes ; and if ever one could say of a man that he waa 
all hut murdered — murdered within an inch — one 
must say it of him. The case was this, as reported 
by Baillet in his ' Vie De M. Des Cartes,' torn. I. p. 
102-3. In the year 1621, when Des Cartes might 
be about twenty-six years old, he was touring about 
as usual (for he was as restless as a hyena) ; and, 
coming to the Elbe, either at Gluckstadt or at Ham- 
burg, he took shipping for East Friezland. What 
he could want in East Friezland no man has ever dis- 
covered ; and perhaps he took this into consideration 
himself; for, on reaching Embden, he resolved to sail 
instantly for West Friezland ; and being very impa- 
tient of delay, he hired a bark, with a few mariners to 
navigate it. No sooner had he got out to sea, than he 
made a pleasing discovery, viz., that he had shut him- 
self up in a den of murderers. His crew, says M. 
Baillet, he soon found out to be ' des scelerats ' — 
not amateurs, gentlemen, as we are, but professional 
men — the height of whose ambition at that moment 
was to cut his individual throat. But the story is too 
pleasing to be abridged; I shall give it, therefore, 
accurately, from the French of his biographer : " M. 
Des Cartes had no company but that of his servant, 
with whom he Avas conversing in French. The sailors, 
who took him for a foreign merchant, rather tlian a 
cavalier, concluded that he must have money about 
him. Accordingly, they came to a resolution by no 
means advantageous to his purse. There is this dif- 
ference, however, between sea-robbers and the robbers 
in forests, that the latter may, without hazard, spare 



MrKDER. * 81 

the lives of tiieir victims; wliereas the others cannot 
put a passenger on shore in such a case without run- 
ning the risk of being apprehended. The crew of M. 
Des Cartes arranged their measures with a view to 
evade any danger of that sort. They observed that 
he was a stranger from a distance, without acquaint- 
ance in the country, and that nobody would take any 
trouble to inquire about him, in case he should never 
come to hand {quand il viendroit a manquer).' Think, 
gentlemen, of these Friezland dogs discussing a phi- 
losopher as if he were a puncheon of rum consigned to 
Bomc ship-broker. ' His temper, they remarked, was 
very mild and patient; and, judging from the gentle- 
ness of his deportment, and the courtesy with which 
he treated themselves, that he could be nothing more 
than some green young man, without station or root 
in the world, they concluded that they should have all 
the easier task in disposing of his life. They made 
no scruple to discuss the whole matter in his presence, 
as not supposing that he understood any other lan- 
guage than that in which he conversed with his ser- 
vant ; and the amount of their deliberation Avas — to 
murder him, then to throw him into the sea, and to 
divide his spoils.' 

Excuse my laughing, gentlemen ; but the fact is, I 
always do laugh when I think of this case — two 
things about it seem so droll. One is, the horrid 
panic or ' funk ' (as the men of Eton call it) in which 
Des Cartes must have found himself, upon hearing 
this regular drama sketched for his own death — 
funeral — succession and administration to his effects. 
But another thing which seems to me still more funny 
about this affair is, that if these Friezland -hounds ha>l. 



32 MTTBDEK. 

been ' game,' we should have no Cartesian dHIoso- 
phy ; and how we could have done without that, con- 
sidering the world of books it has produced, I leave 
to any respectable trunk-maker to declare. 

However, to go on : spite of his enormous funk, 
Des Cartes showed fight, and by that means awed 
these Anti-Cartesian rascals. ' Finding,' says M. 
Baillet, 'that the matter was no joke, M. Des Cartes 
leaped upon his feet in a trice, assumed a stern coun- 
tenance that these cravens had never looked for, and, 
addressing them in theu- own language, threatened to 
run them through on the spot if they dared to give 
him any insult.' Certainly, gentlemen, this would 
have been an honor far above the merits of such in- 
considerable rascals — to be spitted like larks upon a 
Cartesian sword ; and therefore I am glad M. Des 
Cartes did not rob the gallows by executing his threat, 
especially as he could not possibly have brought his 
vessel to port, after he had murdered his crew; so 
that he must have continued to cruise for ever in the 
Zuyder Zee, and would probably have been mistaken 
by sailors for the Flying Dutchman, homeward bound. 
' The spirit which M. Des Cartes manifested,' says 
his biographer, ' had the eJffect of magic on these 
wretches. The suddenness of their consternation 
struck their minds with a confusion which blinded 
them to their advantage, and thej'^ conveyed him to his 
destination as peaceably as he could desire.' 

Possibly, gentlemen, you may fancy that, on the 
model of Csesar's address to his poor ferryman — ' Cce- 
sarem vehis et fortunas ejus ' — M. Des Cartes needed 
only to have said, ' D ogs, you cannot cut my throat, 
for you carry Des Cartes and his philosophy,' and 



MITBDEa. 33 

might safely have defied them to do their worst. A 
German emperor had the same notion, when, being 
cautioned to keep out of the way of a cannonading, 
he replied, ' Tut ! man. Did you ever hear of a cannon- 
ball that killed an emperor ? ' ^ As to an emperor I 
cannot say, but a less thing has sufficed to smash 
a philosopher ; and the next great philosopher of Eu- 
rope undoubtedly ivas murdered. This was Spinosa. 

I know very well the common opinion about him is, 
that he died in his bed. Perhaps he did, but he was 
murdered for all that ; and this I shall prove by a 
book published at Brussels in the year 1731, entitled 
' La Vie de Spinosa, par M. Jean Colerus,' with 
many additions, from a MS. life, by one of his friends. 
Spinosa died on the 21st February, 1677, being then 
little more than forty-four years old. This, of itself, 
looks suspicious ; and M. Jean admits, that a certain 
expression in the MS. life of him would warrant the 
conclusion, ' que sa mort n'a pas ete-^-fait naturelle.' 
Living in a damp country, and a sailor's country, like 
Holland, he may be thought to have indulged a good 
deal in grog, especially in punch,^ which was then 
newly discovered. Undoubtedly he might have done 
so ; but the fact is, that he did not. M. Jean calls 
him ' extremement sobre en son boire et en son man- 
ger.' And though some wild stories were afloat about 
his using the juice of mandragora (p. 140) and opium 
(p. 1 44), yet neither of these articles is found in his 
druggist's bill. Living, therefore, with such sobriety, 
how was it possible that he should die a natural death 
at forty-four ? Hear his biographer's account : — ' Sun- 
day morning, the 21st of February, before it was 
church time, Spinosa came down stairs, and conversed 



MUEDEK. 

with, the master and mistress of tlie house. At tliia 
time, therefore, perhaps ten o'clock on Sunday morn- 
ing, you see that Spinosa was alive, and pretty well. 
But it seems ' he had summoned from Amsterdam a 
certain physician, whom,' says the biographer, ' I shall 
not otherwise point out to notice than by these two 
letters, L. M.* This L. M. had directed the people of 
the house to purchase ' an ancient cock,' and to have 
him boiled forthwith, in order that Spinosa might take 
Eome broth about noon ; which in fact he did ; and ate 
some of the old cock with a good appetite, after the 
landlord and his wife had returned from church. 

' In the afternoon, L. M. staid alone with Spinosa, 
the people of the house having returned to church ; on 
coming out from which, they learned, with much sur- 
prise, that Spinosa had died about three o'clock, in the 
presence of L. M., Avho took his departure for Amster- 
dam that same evening, by the night-boat, without 
paying the least attention to the deceased,' and pro- 
bably without paying very much attention to the pay- 
ment of his own little account. ' No doubt he was 
the readier to dispense with these duties, as he had 
possessed himself of a ducatoon, and a small quantity 
of silver, together with a silver-hafted knife, and had 
absconded with his pillage.' Here you see, gentle- 
men, the murder is plain, and the manner of it. It 
was L. M. who murdered Spinosa for his money. Poor 
Spinosi was an invalid, meagre and weak: as no blood 
was observed, L. M. no doubt threw him down, and 
smothered him with pillows — the poor man being 
already half suffocated by his infernal dinner. After 
masticating that ' ancient cock,' which I take to mean 
a cock of the preceding century, in what condition 



MTTBDEB. 36 

could the poor invalid find nimself for a stand -iip fight 
with L. M. ? But who was L. M. ? It surely never 
could be Ijindley Murray, for I saw him at York in 
1 825 ; and, besides, I do not think he would do such 
a thing — at least, not to a brother grammarian : for you 
know, gentlemen, that Spinosa wrote a very respectable 
Hebrew grammar. 

Hobbes — but why, or on what principle, I never 
could understand — was not murdered. This was a 
capital oversight of the professional men of the seven- 
teenth century ; because in every light he was a fine 
subject for murder, except, indeed, that he was lean 
and skinny ; for I can prove that he had money, and 
(what is very funny) he had no right to make the least 
resistance ; since, according to himself, irresistible 
power creates the very highest species of right, sc 
that it is rebellion of the blackest dye to refuse to be 
murdered, when a competent force appears to murder 
you. However, gentlemen, though he was not mur- 
dered, I am happy to assure you that (by his own ac- 
count) he was three times very near being murdered, 
which is consolatory. The first time was in the spring 
of 1G40, when he pretends to have circulated a little 
MS. on the king's behalf against the Parliament ; he 
never could produce this MS., by the by ; but he says, 
that, ' Had not His Majesty dissolved the Parliament' 
(in May), ' it had brought him into danger of his life.* 
Dissolving the Parliament, however, was of no use ; 
for in November of the same year the Long Parliament 
assembled, and Hobbes, a second time fearing he should 
be murdered, ran away to France. This looks like the 
madness of John Dennis, who thought that Louis XIV. 
would never make peace with Queen Anne, unless he 



36 MTJRDEB. ^* 

■I' 

(Dennis, to mt) were given up to French vengeance ; 
and actually ran away from tlie sea-coast under that 
belief. In France, Hobbes managed to take care of bis 
tbroat pretty well for ten years ; but at the end of tbat 
time, by way of paying court to Cromwell, be pub- 
lisbed his ' Leviathan.' The old coward now began 
to ' funk ' horribly for the third time ; he fancied the 
swords of the cavaliers were constantly at his ttioat, 
recollecting how they had served the Parliament am- 
bassadors at the Hague and Madrid. ' Tum,' saya 
he, in his dog-Latin life of himself, 

' Tum venit in mentem mihi Dorislaus et Ascham ; 
Tanquam proscripto terror ubique aderat.' 

And accordingly he ran home to England. Now, cer- 
tainly, it is very true that a man deserved a cudgelling 
for writing ' Leviathan ; ' and two or three cudgel- 
lings for writing a pentameter ending so villanously as 
' terror ubique aderat ! ' But no man ever thought 
him worthy of anything beyond cudgelling. And, in 
fact, the whole story is a bounce of his own. For, in 
a most abusive letter which he wrote ' to a learned 
person' (meaning Wallis the mathematician), he gives 
quite another account of the matter, and says (p. 8), 
he ran borne ' because he would not trust his safety 
with the French clergy ; ' insinuating that he was likely 
to be murdered for his religion, which would have been 
a high joke indeed — Tom's being brought to the stake 
for religion. 

Bounce or not bounce, however, certain it is that 
Hobbes, to the end of his life, feared that somebody 
would murder him. This is proved by the story I am 
going to tell you : it is not from a manuscript, but (as 
Mr. Coleridge says) it is as good as manuscript ; for it 



MTJEDEK. 87 

comes from a book now entirely forgotten, viz., ' The 
Creed of Mr. Hobbes Examined : in a Conference be- 
tween blm and a Student in Divinity' (published 
about ten years before Hobbes's death). The book is 
anonymous, but it was written by Tennison, the same 
who, about thirty years after, succeeded Tillotson as 
Archbishop of Canterbury. The introductory anecdote 
is as follows : — 'A certain divine ' (no doubt Ten- 
nison himself) ' took an annual tour of one month to 
different parts of the island." In one of these excur- 
sions (1670), he visited the Peak in Derbyshire, partly 
in consequence of Hobbes's description of it. Being 
in that neighborhood, he could not but pay a visit to 
Buxton ; and at the very moment of his arrival, he was 
fortunate enough to find a party of gentlemen dis- 
mounting at the inn-door, amongst whom was a long 
thin fellow, who turned out to be no less a person than 
Mr. Hobbes, who probably had ridden over from Chats- 
worth. ^ Meeting so great a lion, a tourist, in search 
of the picturesque, could do no less than present him- 
self in the character of bore. And luckily for this 
scheme, two of Mr. Hobbes's companions were suddenly 
summoned away by express ; so that, for the rest of his 
stay at Buxton, he had Leviathan entirely to himself, 
and had the honor of bowsing with him in the even- 
ing. Hobbes, it seems, at first showed a good deal of 
stiffness, for he was shy of divines ; but this wore off, 
and he became very sociable and funny, and they 
agreed to go into the bath together. How Tennison 
could venture to gambol in the same water with Levi- 
athan, I cannot explain ; but so it was : they frolicked 
about like two dolphins, though Hobbes must have 
oeen as old as the hills ; and ' in those intervals 



MUKDEB. 



wherein they abstained from swimming and plunging 
themselves' {i. e., diving), 'they discoursed of many 
things relating to the Baths of the Ancients, and the 
Origine of Springs. When they had in this manner 
passed away an hour, they stepped out of the bath ; 
and, having dried and cloathed themselves, they sate 
down in expectation of such a supper as the place af- 
forded ; designing to refresh themselves like the 
BeipnosophistcB, and rather to reason than to drink 
profoundly. But in this innocent intention they were 
interrupted by the disturbance arising from a little 
quarrel, in which some of the ruder people in the house 
were for a short time engaged. At this Mr. Hobbes 
seemed much concerned, though he Avas at some dis- 
tance from the persons.' And why was he concerned, 
gentlemen ? No doubt, you fancy, from some benign 
and disinterested love of peace worthy of an old man 
and a philosopher. But listen — ' For a while he was 
not composed, but related it once or twice as to him- 
self, with a low and careful, i. e. anxious, tone, how 
Sextus Roscius was murthered after supper by the 
Balnese Palatinse. Of such general extent is that re- 
mark of Cicero, in relation to Epicurus the Atheist, of 
whom he observed, that he of all men dreaded most 
those things which he contemned — Death and the 
Gods.' Merely because it was supper time, and in the 
neighborhood of a bath, Mr. Hobbes must have the 
fate of Sextus Roscius. He must be muri/iered, be- 
cause Sextus Roscius was murf Aered, What logic was 
there in this, unless to a man who was always dream- 
ing of miu-der ? Here was Leviathan, no longer afraid 
of the daggers of English cavaliers or French clergy, 
but ' frightened from his propriety ' by a row in an ale- 



MURDEE. 39 

house between some honest clodhoppers of Derby- 
shire, whom his own gaunt scarecrow of a person, that 
belonged to quite another century, would have fright- 
ened out of their wits. 

jMalebranche, it will give you pleasure to bear, was 
murdered. The man who murdered him is well 
kn.o\vn : it was Bishop Berkeley. The story is fa- 
miliar, though hitherto not put in a proper light. 
Berkeley, when a young man, went to Paris, and 
called on Pere Malebranche. He found him in his 
cell cooking. Cooks have ever been a genus irrita- 
bile ; authors still more so. Malebranche was both. A 
dispute arose ; the old father, warm already, became 
warmer ; culinary and metaphysical irritations united 
to derange his liver : he took to his bed and died. 
Such is the common version of the story. ' So the 
whole ear of Denmark is abused.' The fact is, that 
the matter was hushed up, out of consideration for 
Berkeley, who (as Pope justly observes) had ' every 
virtue under heaven : ' else it was well known that 
Berkeley, feeling himself nettled by the waspishness of 
the old Frenchman, squared at him ; a turn-up was 
the consequence ; Malebranche was floored in the first 
round ; the conceit was wholly taken out of him ; and 
he would perhaps have given in ; but Berkeley's blood 
was now up, and he insisted on the old Frenchman's 
retracting his doctrine of Occasional Causes. The 
vanity of the man was too great for this ; and he fell 
a sacrifice to the impetuosity of Irish youth, combined 
with his o^vn absurd obstinacy. 

Leibnitz, being every way superior to Malebranche, 
one might, a fortiori, have counted on his being mur- 
dered; which, however, was not the case. I believe 



40 MUKDEE. 

he was nettled at this neglect, and felt himself insulted 
by the security in which he passed his days. In no 
other way can I explain his conduct at the latter end 
of his life, when he chose to grow very avaricious, 
and to hoard up large sums of gold, which he kept in 
his own house. This was at Vienna, where he died ; 
and letters are still in existence, describing the im- 
measurable anxiety which he entertained for his throat. 
Still his ambition, for being attempted at least, was so 
great, that he would not forego the danger. A late 
English pedagogue, of Birmingham manufacture — viz., 
Dr. Parr — took a more selfish course under the same 
circumstance. He had amassed a considerable quan- 
tity of gold and silver plate, which was for some time 
deposited in his bedroom at his parsonage house. Hat- 
ton. But gromng every day more afraid of being 
murdered, which he knew that he could not stand 
(and to which, indeed, he never had the slightest pre- 
tensions), he transferred the whole to the Hatton 
blacksmith ; conceiving, no doubt, that the murder of 
a blacksmith would fall more lightly on the solus 
reipuhliccB, than that of a pedagogue. But I have 
heard this greatly disputed ; and it seems now gener- 
ally agreed, that one good horseshoe is worth about 
two and a quarter Spital sermons.'' 

As Leibnitz, though not murdered, may be said to 
have died, partly of the fear that he should be mur- 
dered, and partly of vexation that he was not, Kant, 
on the other hand — who manifested no ambition in 
that way — had a narrower escape from a murderer 
than any man we read of, except Des Cartes. So ab- 
surdly does fortune throw about her favors ! The 
case is told, I think, in an anonymous life of this very 



HUaDEB. 41 

great man. For health's sake, Kant imposed upon 
himself, at one time, a walk of six miles every day 
along a high-road. This fact becoming known to a 
man who had his private reasons for committing 
murder, at the third milestone from Konigsberg, he 
waited for his ' intended,' who came up to time as 
duly as a mail-coach. 

But for an accident, Kant was a dead man. This 
accident lay in the scrupulous, or what Mrs. Quickly 
would have called the peevish, morality of the miu- 
derer. An old professor, he fancied, might be laden 
with sins. Not so a young child. On this consider- 
ation, he turned away from Kant at the critical mo- 
ment, and soon after murdered a child of five years 
old. Such is the German account of the matter ; but 
my opinion is, that the murderer was an amateur, who 
felt how little would be gained to the cause of good 
taste by murdering an old, arid, and adust metaphysi- 
cian ; there was no room for display, as the man could 
not possibly look more like a mummy when dead, 
than he had done alive. 

Thus, gentlemen, I have traced the connection be- 
tween philosophy and our art, until insensibly I find 
that I have wandered into our own era. This I shall 
not take any pains to characterize apart from that 
which preceded it, for, in fact, they have no distinct 
character. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 
together with so much of the nineteenth as we have 
yet seen, jointly compose the Augustan age of murder. 
The finest work of the seventeenth century is, unques- 
tionably, the murder of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, 
which has my entire approbation. In the grand fea- 
4 



42 MVBDEB. 

ture of mystery, which in some shape or other ought 
to color every judicious attempt at murder, it is excel- 
lent ; for the mystery is not yet dispersed. The 
attempt to fasten the murder upon the Papists, which 
would injure it as much as some well-known Correg- 
gios have heen injured by the professional picture- 
cleaners, or would even ruin it by translating it into 
the spurious class of mere political or partisan murders, 
thoroughly wanting in the murderous animus, I exhort 
the society to discountenance. In fact, this notion is 
altogether baseless, and arose in pure Protestant 
fanaticism. Sir Edmondbury had not distinguished 
himself amongst the London magistrates by any sever- 
ity against the Papists, or in favoring the attempts of 
zealots to enforce the penal laws against individuals. 
He had not armed against himself the animosities of 
any religious sect whatever. And as to the droppings 
of wax lights upon the dress of the corpse when first 
discovered in a ditch, from which it was inferred at 
the time that the priests attached to the Popish 
Queen's Chapel had been concerned in the murder, 
either these were mere fraudulent artifices devised by 
those who wished to fix the suspicion upon the Pa- 
pists, or else the whole allegation — wax-droppings, 
and the suggested cause of the droppings — might be 
a bounce or fib of Bishop Burnet ; who, as the Duchess 
of Portsmouth used to say, was the one great master 
of fibbing and romanciog in the seventeenth century. 
At the same time, it must be observed that the quan- 
tity of mm-der was not great in Sir Edmondbury'a 
century, at least amongst our own artists ; which, per- 
haps, is attributable to the want of enlightened patron- 
age. Sint Mcecenates, non deerunt, Flacce, Marones, 



MURDER. 43 

Consiilting Grant's ' Observations on the Bills of Mor- 
tality' (4tli edition, Oxford, 1665), I find, that, out 
of 229,250, who died in London during one period of 
twenty years in the seventeenth century, not more 
than eighty-six were murdered ; that is, about four 
three-tenths per annum. A small number this, gen- 
tlemen, to found an academy upon ; and certainly, 
where the quantity is so small, we have a right to ex- 
pect that the quality should be first-rate. Perhaps it 
was ; yet still I am of opinion that the best artist in 
this century was not equal to the best in that which 
followed. For instance, however praiseworthy the 
caso of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey may be (and nobody 
can be more sensible of its merits than I am), still, I 
cannot consent to place it on a level with that of Mrs. 
Ruscombe of Bristol, either as to originality of design, 
or boldness and breadth of style. This good lady's 
murder took place early in the reign of George III. — 
a reign which was notoriously favorable to the arts 
generally. She lived in College Green, with a single 
maid-servant, neither of them having any pretension 
to the notice of history but what they derived from 
the great artist whose workmanship I am recording. 
One fine morning, when all Bristol was alive and iu 
motion, some suspicion arising, the neighbors forced an 
entrance into the house, and found Mrs. Ruscombe 
murdered in her bedroom, and the servant murdered 
on the stairs. This was at noon ; and, not more than 
two hours before, both mistress and servant had been 
seen alive. To the best of my remembrance, this was 
lu 1^64 ; upwards of sixty years, therefore, have now 
elapsed, and yet the artist is still undiscovered. The 
•uspicions of posterity have settled upon two pretend- 



44 MTJRDEK. 

ers — a baker and a cliimney-sweeper. But posterity 
is wrong ; no unpractised artist could have conceived 
so bold an idea as that of a noonday murder in the 
heart of a great city. It was no obscure baker, gentle- 
men, or anonymous chimney-sweeper, be assured, that 
executed this work. I know who it was. {Here there 
was a general buzz, which at length broke out into 
open applause ; upon which the lecturer Hushed, and 
went on with much earnestness.) For Heaven's sake, 
gentlemen, do not mistake me ; it was not I that did 
it. I have not the vanity to think myself equal to any 
such achievement ; be assured that you greatly over- 
rate my poor talents ; Mrs. E-uscombe's affair was far 
beyond my slender abilities. But I came to know 
who the artist was, from a celebrated surgeon who 
assisted at his dissection. This gentleman had a pri- 
vate museum in the way of his profession, one corner 
of which was occupied by a cast from a man of remark- 
ably fine proportions. 

' That,' said the surgeon, ' is a cast from the cele- 
brated Lancashire highwayman, who concealed his pro- 
fession for some time from his neighbors, by drawing 
woollen stockings over his horse's legs, and in that 
way muffling the clatter which he must else have made 
in riding up a flagged alley that led to his stable. At 
the time of his execution for highway robbery, I waa 
studying under Cruickshank : and the man's figure 
Avas so uncommonly fine, that no money or exertion 
was spared to get into possession of him with the least 
possible delay. By the connivance of the under- 
sheriff, he was cut down within the legal time, and 
instantly put into a chaise-and-four ; so that, when he 
reached Cruickshank's, he was positively not dead. 



MUBBEB. 45 

Mr. , a young student at that time, had the honor 

of giving him the coup de grace, and finishing the sen- 
tence of the law.' This remarkable anecdote, which 
seemed to imply that all the gentlemen in the dissect- 
ing-room were amateurs of our class, struck me a good 
deal ; and I was repeating it one day to a Lancashire 
lady, who thereupon informed me, that she had herself 
lived in the neighborhood of that highwayman, and 
well remembered two circumstances, which combined, 
in the opinion of all his neighbors, to fix upon him the 
credit of Mrs. Ruscombe's afiair. One was, the fact 
of his absence for a whole fortnight at the period of 
that murder ; the other, that, within a very little time 
after, the neighborhood of this highwayman was del- 
uged with dollars. Now, Mrs. Ruscombe was known 
to have hoarded about two thousand of that coin. Be 
the artist, however, who he might, the affair remains a 
durable monument of his genius ; for such was the im- 
pression of awe, and the sense of power left behind, by 
the strength of conception manifested in this murder, 
that no tenant (as I was told in 1810) had been found 
up to that time for Mrs. Ruscombe's house. 

But, whilst I thus eulogize the Ruscombian case, let 
me not be supposed to overlook the many other speci- 
mens of extraordinary merit spread over the face of this 
century. Such cases, indeed, as that of Miss Bland, or 
of Captain Donnellan, and Sir Theophilus Boughton, 
shall never have any countenance from me. Fie on 
these dealers in poison, say I : can they not keep to 
the old honest way of cutting throats, without intro- 
ducing such abominable innovations from Italy ? I 
consider all these poisoning cases, compared with the 
legitimate style, as no better than waxwork by the 



46 MtTKDEB. 

side of sculpture, or a litliograpliic print by the side ot 
a fine Volpato. But, dismissing these, there remain 
many excellent works of art in a pure style, such as 
nobody need be ashamed to own ; and this every can- 
did connoisseur will admit. Candid, observe, I say; 
for great allowances must be made in these cases ; no 
artist can ever be sure of carrying through his own fine 
preconception. Awkward disturbances will arise ; 
people will not submit to have their throats cut 
quietly ; they will run, they Avill kick, they will bite ; 
and whilst the portrait painter often has to complain 
of too much torpor in his subject, the artist in our line 
is generally embarrassed by too much animation. "At 
the same time, however disagreeable to the artist, this 
tendency in murder to excite and irritate the subject is 
certainly one of its advantages to the world in general, 
which we ought not to overlook, since it favors the 
development of latent talent. Jeremy Taylor notices 
with admiration the extraordinary leaps which people 
will take under the influence of fear. There was a 
striking instance of this in the recent case of the 
M'Keans : the boy cleared a height, such as he will 
never clear again to his dying day. Talents also of 
the most brilliant description for thumping, and, in- 
deed, for all the gymnastic exercises, have sometimes 
been developed by the panic which accompanies our 
artists ; talents else buried and hid under a bushel, to 
the possessors as much as to their friends. I remem- 
ber an interesting illustration of this fact, in a case 
which I learned in Germany. 

Riding one day in the neighborhood of Munich, I 
overtook a distinguished amateur of our society, whose 
name, for obvious reasons, I shall conceal. This gen- 



UTTBDEB. 47 

tleman informed me that, finding himself wearied with 
the frigid pleasures (such he esteemed them) of mere 
amatcurship, he had quitted England for the Continent 

— meaning to practise a little professionally. For this 
pur])ose he resorted to Germany, conceiving the police 
in that part of Europe to be more heavy and drowsy 
than elsewhere. His dehut as a practitioner took place 
at Mannheim ; and, knowing me to be a brother ama- 
teur, he freely communicated the whole of his maiden 
adventure. ' Opposite to ray lodging,' said he, ' lived 
a baker ; he was somewhat of a miser, and lived quite 
alone. Whether it were his great expanse of chalky 
face, or what else, I know not, but the fact was, I 
"fancied" him, and resolved to commence business 
upon his throat, which, by the way, he always carried 
bare — a fashion which is very irritating to my desires. 
Precisely at eight o'clock in the evening, I observed 
that he regularly shut up his windows. One night I 
watched him when thus engaged — bolted in after him 

— locked the door — and, addressing him with great 
suavity, acquainted him with the nature of my errand ; 
at the same time advising him to make no resistance, 
which would be mutually unpleasant. So saying, I 
drew out my tools ; and Avas proceeding to operate 
But at this spectacle the baker, who seemed to have 
been struck by catalepsy at my first announcement, 
awoke into tremendous agitation. ' I will not be mur- 
dered ! ' he shrieked aloud ; ' what for will I ' (meaning 
shall I) ' lose my precious throat ? ' ' What for ? ' said 
I ; ' if for no other reason, for this — that you put 
alum into your bread. But no matter, alum or no 
alum' (for I was resolved to forestall any argument on 
that point), ' know that I am a virtuoso in the art of 



48 MITRDEK. 

murder — am. desirous of improving myself in its 
details — and am enamored of your vast surface of 
throat, to wliicli I am determined to be a customer.' 
' Is it so ? ' said he, ' but I'll find you a customer in 
another line ; ' and so saying, he threw himself into a 
boxing attitude. The very idea of his boxing struck 
me as ludicrous. It is true, a London baker had dis- 
tinguished himself in the ring, and became known to 
fame under the title of the Master of the Rolls ; but 
he was young and unspoiled ; whereas, this man Avas 
a monstrous feather-bed in person, fifty years old, and 
totally out of condition. Spite of all this, however, 
and contending against me, who am a master in the 
art, he made so desperate a defence, that many times I 
feared he might turn the tables upon me ; and that I, 
an amateur, might be murdered by a rascally baker. 
What a situation ! Minds of sensibility will sympa- 
thize with my anxiety. How severe it was, you may 
understand by this, that for the first thirteen rounds 
the baker positively had the advantage. Round the 
14th, I received a blow on the right eye, which closed 
it up ; in the end, I believe, this was my salvation ; 
for the anger it roused in me was so great, that, in the 
next, and every one of the three following rounds, I 
floored the baker. 

' Round 19th. The baker came up piping, and 
manifestly the worse for wear. His geometrical ex- 
ploits in the four last rounds had done him no good. 
However, he showed some skill in stopping a mes- 
sage which I was sending to his cadaverous mug ; in 
delivering which, my foot slipped, and I went down. 

' Round 20th. Surveying the baker, I became 
ashamed of having been so much bothered by a shape- 



MUEDEK. 49 

less mass of dough ; and I wont in fiercely, and ad- 
ministered some severe punishment. A rally took 
place — botli went down — baker undermost — ten to 
three on amateur. 

' Round 21st, The baker jumped up with surpris- 
ing agility ; indeed, he managed his pins capitally, 
and fought wonderfully, considering that he was 
drenched in perspiration ; but the shine was now 
taken out of him, and his game was the mere effect of 
panic. It was now clear that he could not last much 
longer. In the course of this round we tried the 
Avcaving system, in which I had greatly the advantage, 
and hit him repeatedly on the conk. My reason for 
this was, that his conk was covered with carbuncles ; 
and I thought I should vex him by taking such liber- 
ties with his conk, which in fact I did. 

' The three next rounds, the master of the rolls 
staggered about like a cow on the ice. Seeing how 
matters stood, in round 24th I whispered something 
into his ear, which sent him down like a shot. It was 
nothing more than my private opinion of the value of 
his throat at an annuity office. This little confiden- 
tial whisper afi"ected him greatly ; the very perspiration 
was frozen on his face, and for the next two rounds I 
had it all my own way. And when I called time for 
the 27th round, he lay like a log on the floor.' 

After which, said I to the amateur, ' It may be pre- 
sumed that you accomplished your purpose.' ' You 
are right,' said he mildly, ' I did ; and a great satisfac- 
tion, you know, it was to my mind, for by this means 
I killed two birds with one stone ; ' meaning that he 
had both thumped the baker and murdered him. 
Now, for the life of me, I could not see that ; for, on 
6 



60 MI7EDEE. 

the c:)ntrary, to my mind it appeared that he had 
taken two stones to kill one bird, having been obliged 
to take the conceit out of him first with his fist, and theu 
with his tools. But no matter for his logic. The 
moral of his story was good, for it showed what an 
astonishing stimulus to latent talent is contained iu 
any reasonable prospect of being miu'dered. A pursy, 
.unwieldy, half cataleptic baker of Mannheim had 
absolutely fought seven-and-twenty rounds with an 
accomplished English boxer, merel} upon this inspira- 
tion ; so great was natural genius exalted and sublimed 
by the genial presence of his murderer. 

Really, gentlemen, when one hears of such things 
as these, it becomes a duty, perhaps, a little to soften 
that extreme asperity with which most men speak of 
murder. To hear people talk, you would suppose 
that all the disadvantages and inconveniences were on 
the side of being murdered, and that there were none 
at all in not being murdered. But considerate men 
think otherwise. ' Certainly,' says Jeremy Taylor, 
' it is a less temporal evil to fall by the rudeness of a 
sword than the violence of a fever : and the axe ' (to 
which he might have added the ship-carpenter's mallet 
and the crowbar), ' a much less affliction than a stran- 
gury.' Very true ; the bishop talks like a wise man 
and an amateur, as I am sure he was ; and another 
great philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, was equally above 
the vulgar prejudices on this subject. He declares 
it to be one of ' the noblest functions of reason to 
know whether it is time to walk out of the world or 
not.' (Book iii., Collers' Translation.) No sort of 
knowledge being rarer than this, surely that man must 
be a most philanthropic character, who undertakes to 



HUSDEB. 51 

instruct people in tliis branch, of knowledge gratis, and 
at no little hazard to himself. All this, however, I 
throw out only in the way of speculation to future 
moralists ; declaring in the meantime my own private 
conviction, that very few men commit murder upon 
philanthropic or patriotic principles, and repeating 
what I have already said once at least — that, as to 
the majority of murderers, they are very incorrect 
characters. 

With respect to the Williams' murders, the sub- 
limest and most entire in their excellence that ever 
were committed, I shall not allow myself to speak 
incidentally. Nothing less than an entire lecture, or 
even an entire course of lectures, would suffice to ex- 
pound their merits. But one curious fact connected 
with his case I shall mention, because it seems to im- 
ply that the blaze of his genius absolutely dazzled the 
eye of criminal justice. You all remember, I doubt not, 
that the instruments with which he executed his first 
great work (the murder of the Marrs) were a ship- 
carpenter's mallet and a knife. Now, the mallet be- 
longed to an old Swede, one John Peterson, and bore 
his initials. This instrument Williams left behind 
him in Marr's house, and it fell into the hands of the 
magistrates. But, gentlemen, it is a fact that the 
publication of this circumstance of the initials led im- 
mediately to the apprehension of Williams, and, if 
made earlier, would have prevented his second great 
work (the murder of the Williamsons), which took 
place precisely twelve days after. Yet the magistrates 
kept back this fact from the public for the entire 
twelve days, and until that second work Avas accom- 
plished. That finished, they published it, apparently 



52 MTJRDEE. 

feeling that Williams had now done enough for hia 
fame, and that his glory was at length placed beyond 
the reach of accident. 

As to Mr. Thurtell's case, I know not what to say 
Naturally, I have e^rerj disposition to think highly of 
my predecessor in the chair of this society ; and I ac- 
knowledge that his lectures were unexceptionable. 
But, speaking ingenuously, I do really think that his 
principal performance, as an artist, has been much 
overrated. I admit, that at first, I was myself carried 
away by the general enthusiasm. On the morning 
Avhen the murder was made known in London, there 
was the fullest meeting of amateurs that I have ever 
known since the days of Williams ; old bedridden con- 
noisseurs, who had got into a peevish way of sneering 
and complaining ' that there was nothing doing,' now 
hobbled down to our club-room : such hilarity, such 
benign expression of general satisfaction, I have rarely 
witnessed. On every side you saw people shaking 
hands, congratulating each other, and forming dinner 
parties for the evening ; and nothing was to be heard 
but triumphant challenges of — ' Well ! will this do ? ' 
' Is this the right thing ? ' ' Are you satisfied at last ? ' 
But in the middle of the row, I remember, we all 
grew silent, on hearing the old cynical amateur L. 
S stumping along with his wooden leg ; he en- 
tered the room with his usual scowl ; and, as he ad- 
vanced, he continued to growl and stutter the whole 
way — ' Mere plagiarism — base plagiarism from hints 
that I threw out ! Besides, his style is as harsh as 
Albert Durer, and as coarse as Fuseli.' Many thought 
that this was mere jealousy, and general waspishness ; 
but I confess that, when the first glow of enthusiasm 



MUEDEB. 53 

had subsided, I have found most judicious critics to 
agree that there was something falsetto in the style of 
Thurtell. The fact is, he was a member of our so- 
ciety, which naturally gave a friendly bias to our 
'udgments ; and his person was universally familiar to 
the ' fancy,' which gave him, with the whole London 
public, a temporary popularity, that his pretensions 
are not capable of supporting ; for opinionum conwienta 
dclet dies, naturae judicia confrmat. There was, how- 
ever, an unfinished design of Thurtell' s for the murder 
of a man with a pair of dumb-bells, which I admired 
greatly ; it was a mere outline, that he never filled in ; 
but to my mind it seemed every way superior to his 
chief work. I remember that there was great regret 
expressed by some amateurs that this sketch should 
have been left in an unfinished state : but there I can- 
not agree with them ; for the fragments and first bold 
outlines of original artists have often a felicity about 
them which is apt to vanish in the management of the 
details. 

The case of the M'Keans I consider far beyond the 
vaunted performance of Thurtell — indeed, above all 
praise ; and bearing that relation, in fact, to the im- 
mortal works of Williams, which the ' ^neid ' bears 
to the ' Iliad.' 

But it is now time that I should say a few words 
about the principles of murder, not with a view to 
regulate your practice, but your judgment : as to old 
women, and the mob of newspaper readers, they are 
pleased with -anything, provided it is bloody enough. 
But the mind of sensibility requires something more. 
First, then, let us speak of the kind of person who is 
adapted to the purpose of the murderer ; secondly, of 



64 MURDEE. 

the place wliere ; thirdly, of the time when, and other 
little circumstances. 

As to the person, I suppose that it is evident that 
he ought to be a good man ; because, if he were not, 
he might himself, by possibility, be contemplating 
murder at the very time ; and such ' diamond-cut-dia- 
mond ' tussles, though pleasant enough where nothing 
better is stirring, are really not what a critic can allow 
himself to call murders. I could mention some peo- 
ple (I name no names) who have been murdered by 
other people in a dark lane ; and so far all seemed 
correct enough ; but, on looking farther into the matter, 
the public have become aware that the murdered party 
was himself, at the moment, planning to rob his mur- 
derer, at the least, and possibly to murder him, if he 
had been strong enough. Whenever that is the case, 
or may be thought to be the case, farewell to all the 
genuine effects of the art. For the final purpose of 
murder, considered as a fine art, is precisely the same 
as that of tragedy, in Aristotle's account of it ; viz., 
' to cleanse the heart by means of pity and terror.' 
Now, terror there may be, but how can there be any 
pity for one tiger destroyed by another tiger? 

It is also evident that the person selected ought not 
to be a public character. For instance, no judicious 
artist would have attempted to murder Abraham New- 
land.^ For the case was this : everybody read so 
much about Abraham Newland, and so few people 
ever saw him, that to the general belief he was a mere 
abstract idea. And I remember, that once, when I 
happened to mention that I had dined at a coffee- 
house in company with Abraham Newland, everyl'ody 
looked scornfully at me, as though I had pretended to 



MUEDEK. 55 

lavc played at billiards with Prester Joh.n, oi to have 
lad an affair of honor with the Pope. And, by the 
way, the Pope would be a very improper person to 
murder : for he has such a virtual ubiquity as the 
father of Christendom, and, like the cuckoo, is so 
often heard but never seen, that I suspect most people 
regard /u'z/i also as an abstract idea. Where, indeed, 
a public man is in the habit of giving dinners, ' with 
every delicacy of the season,' the case is very differ- 
ent : every person is satisfied that he is no abstract 
idea; and, therefore, there can be no impropriety in 
murdering him , only that his murder will fall into the 
class of assassinations, which I have not yet treated. 

Thirdly. The subject chosen ought to be in good 
health : for it is absolutely barbarous to murder a sick 
person, who is usually quite unable to bear it. On 
this principle, no tailor ought to be chosen who is 
above twenty-five, for after that age he is sure to be 
dyspeptic. Or at least, if a man will hunt in that 
warren, he will of course think it his duty, on the old 
established equation, to murder some multiple of 9 — 
say 18, 27, or 36. And here, in this benign attention 
to the comfort of sick people, you will observe the 
usual effect of a fine art to soften and refine the feel- 
ings. The world in general, gentlemen, are very 
bloody-minded ; and all they want in a murder is a 
copious effusion of blood ; gaudy display in this point 
ia enough for them. But the enlightened connoisseur 
is more refined in his taste ; and from our art, as from 
all the other liberal arts when thoroughly mastered, 
the result is, to humanize the heart ; so true is it, that 

' Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes, 
Emollit mores, nee sinit esse fex'os.' 



56 MUBDEB. 

A philosopHc friend, well kno-vvn for his philan- 
thropy and general benignity, suggests that the subject 
chosen ought also to have a family of young chil- 
dren wholly dependent upon his exertions, by way of 
deepening the pathos. And, undoubtedly, this is a 
judicious caution. Yet I would not insist too keenly 
on such a condition. Severe good taste unquestiona- 
bly suggests it ; but still, where the man was other- 
wise unobjectionable in point of morals and. health, I 
would not look with too curious a jealousy to a re- 
striction which might have the effect of narrowing the 
artist's sphere. 

So much for the person. As to the time, the place, 
and the tools, I have many things to say, which at 
present I have no room for. The good sense of the 
practitioner has usually directed him to night and 
privacy. Yet there have not been wanting cases 
where this rule was departed from with excellent 
effect. In respect to time, Mrs. Ruscombe's case is a 
beautiful exception, which I have already noticed ; and 
in respect both to time and place, there is a fine ex- 
ception in the annals of Edinburgh (year 1805), familiar 
to every child in Edinburgh, but Avhich has unac- 
countably been defrauded of its due portion of fame 
amongst English amateurs. The case I mean is that 
of a porter to one of the banks, who was murdered, 
whilst carrying a bag of money, in broad daylight, on 
turning out of the High Street, one of the most public 
streets in Europe ; and the murderer is to this hour 
undiscovered. 

' Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus, 
Singula dum capti circumvectamur amore.' 

And now, gentlemen, in conclusion, let me again 



MURDER. 57 

solemnly disclaim all pretensions on my own part to 
the character of a professional man. I never attempted 
any murder in my life, except in the year 1801, upon 
the body of a tom-cat ; and that turned out differently 
from my intention. My purpose, I own, was down- 
right murder. ' Semper ego auditor tantum ? ' said I, 
' nunquamne reponam ? ' And I went down stairs in 
search of Tom at one o'clock on a dark night, with 
the ' animus,' and no doubt with the fiendish looks, of 
a mui-derer. But when I found him, he was in the 
act of plundering the pantry of bread and other 
things. Now this gave a new turn to the affair ; for 
the time being one of general scarcity, when even 
Christians were reduced to the use of potato-bread, 
rice-bread, and all sorts of things, it was downright 
treason in a tom-cat to be wasting good wheaten- 
bread in the way he was doing. It instantly became 
a patriotic duty to put him to death ; and, as I raised 
aloft and shook the glittering steel, I fancied myself 
rising, like Brutus, effulgent from a crowd of patriots, 
and, as I stabbed him, I 

' Call'd aloud on Tally's name. 
And bade the father of his country hail ! ' 

Since then, what wandering thoughts I may have 
had of attempting the life of an ancient ewe, of a 
superannuated hen, and such ' small deer,' are locked 
up in the secrets of my own breast ; but, for the 
higher departments of the art, I confess myself to be 
utterly unfit. My ambition does not rise so high. 
No, gentlemen, in the words of Horace, 

• Fungar vice cotis, acutum 
Beddere quae ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi.* 



SUPPLEMENTARY PAPER ON MURDER, 

CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS. 

A GOOD many years ago, the reader may remember 
that I came forward in the character of a dilettante in 
murder. Perhaps dilettante is too strong a Avord. 
Connoisseur is better suited to the scruples and in- 
firmity of public taste. I suppose there is no harm in 
that, at least. A man is not bound to put his eyes, 
ears, and understanding into his breeches-pocket when 
he meets with a murder. If he is not in a downright 
comatose state, I suppose he must see that one murder 
is better or worse than another, in point of good taste. 
Murders have theu* little differences and shades of 
merit, as well as statues, pictures, oratorios, cameos, 
intaglios, or what not. You may be angry with the 
man for talking too much, or too publicly (as to the 
too much, that I deny — a man can never cultivate his 
taste too highly) ; but you must allow him to think, at 
any rate. Well, would you believe it ? all my neigh- 
bors came to hear of that little aesthetic essay which I 
had published ; and, unfortunately, hearing at the very 
same time of a club that I was connected with, and a 
dinner at which I presided — both tending to the same 
little object as the essay, viz., the diffusion of a just 
taste among Her 9 Majesty's subjects, they got up the 
most barbarous calumnies against me. In particular, 
they said that I, or that the club (which comes to the 

[58] 



f 



HUBDEB 59 

«ame thing), had offered bounties on well-conducted 
homicides — with a scale of drawbacks, in case of any 
one defect or flaw, according to a table issued to pri- 
vate frieuds. Now, let me tell the whole truth about 
the dinner and the club, and it will be seen how 
malicious the world is. But first, confidentially, allow 
me to say what my real principles are upon the matter 
in question. 

As to murder, I never committed one in my life. 
It's a well-known thing amongst all my friends. I can 
get a paper to certify as much, signed by lots of people. 
Indeed, if you come to that, I doubt whether many 
people could produce as strong a certificate. Mine 
would be as big as a breakfast tablecloth. There is 
indeed one member of the club, who pretends to say 
he caught me once making too free with his throat on 
a club night, after everybody else had retired. But, 
observe, he shuffles in his story according to his state 
of civilation. When not fai" gone, he contents himself 
with saying that he caught me ogling his throat ; and 
that I was melancholy for some \veeks after, and that 
my voice sounded in a way expressing, to the nice ear 
of a connoisseur, the sense of opportunities lost ; but the 
club all know that he is a disappointed man himself, 
and that he speaks querulously at times about the fatal 
neglect of a man's conung abroad without his tools. 
Besides, all this is an affair between two amateurs, and 
evervbody makes allowances for little asperities and 
fibs in such a case. ' But,' say you, ' if no murderer, 
you may have encouraged, or even have bespoken a 
murder.' No, upon my honor — no. And that was 
the very point I mshed to argue for your satisfaction. 
The truth is, I am a very particular man in everything 



60 MUEDEK. 

relating to murder ; and perhaps I carry my delicacy 
too far. The Stagirite most justly, and possibly with 
a view to my case, placed virtue in the t6 fiiaor, or mid- 
dle point between two extremes. A golden mean is 
certainly what every man should aim at. But it is 
easier talking than doing ; and, my infirmity being no- 
toriously too much milkiness of heart, I find it difiicult 
to maintain that steady equatorial line between the 
two poles of too much murder on the one hand, and 
too little on the other. I am too soft — and people 
get excused through me — nay, go through life with- 
out an attempt made upon them, that ought not to be 
excused. I believe, if I had the management of things, 
there would hardly be a murder from year's end to 
year's end. In fact, I'm for peace, and quietness, and 
fawningness, and Avhat may be styled knocking-under- 
ness. A man came to me as a candidate for the place 
of my servant, just then vacant. He had the reputa- 
tion of having dabbled a little in our art ; some said, 
not without merit. What startled me, however, was, 
that he supposed this art to be part of his regular du- 
ties in my service, and talked of having it considered 
in his wages. Now, that was a thing I would not 
allow : so I said at once, ' Richard (or James, as the 
case might be), you misunderstand my character. If a 
man will and must practise this difiicult (and allow me 
to add, dangerous) branch of art — if he has an over- 
ruling genius for it, why, in that case, all I say is, that 
he might as well pursue his studies whilst living in my 
service as in another's. And also, I may observe, that 
it can do no harm either to himself or to the subject 
on whom he operates, that he should be guided by 
men of more taste than himself. Genius may do 



MURDEE. 61 

miicli, but long study of the art must always entitle a 
man to offer advice. So far I will go — general prin- 
ciples I will suggest. But as to any particular case, 
once for all I will have nothing to do with it. Never 
tell me of any special work of art you are meditating 
— I set my face against it in toto. For, if once a man 
indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to 
think little of robbing ; and from robbing he comes 
next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that 
to incivility and procrastination. Once begin upon 
this downward path, you never know where you are 
to stop. INIany a man has dated his ruin from some 
murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at 
the time. Principiis ohsta — that's my rule.' Such 
was my speech, and I have always acted up to it ; so, 
if that is not being virtuous, I should be glad to know 
what is. But now about the dinner and the club. 
The club was not particularly of my creation ; it arose 
pretty much as other similar associations, for the prop- 
agation of truth and the communication of new ideas ; 
rather from the necessities of things, than upon any 
one man's suggestion. As to the dinner, if any man 
more than another could be held responsible for that, 
it was a member known amongst us by the name of 
Toad-in-the-hole. He was so called from his gloomy, 
misanthropical disposition, which led him into constant 
disparagements of all modern murders as vicious abor- 
tions, belonging to no authentic school of art. The 
finest performances of our own age he snarled at cyn- 
ically ; and at length this querulous humor grew upon 
him so much, and he became so notorious as a laudator 
temporis acti, that few people cared to seek his society. 
This made him still more fierce and truculent. He 



62 MTTKDEE. 

went about muttering and growling ; wherever you 
met him, he was soliloquizing, and saying, ' despicable 
pretender — without grouping — without two ideas 
upon handling — without ' — and there you lost him. 
At length existence seemed to be painful to him ; he 
rarely spoke, he seemed conversing with phantoms in 
the air ; his housekeeper informed us that his reading 
was nearly confined to ' God's Revenge upon Murder,' 
by Reynolds, and a more ancient book of the same 
title, noticed by Sir Walter Scott in his ' Fortunes of 
Nigel.' Sometimes, perhaps, he might read in the 
' Newgate Calendar ' down to the year 1788, but he 
never looked into a book more recent. In fact, he 
had a theory with regard to the French Revolution, as 
having been the great cause of degeneration in mur- 
der. ' Very soon, sir,' he used to say, ' men will have 
lost the art of killing poultry : the very rudiments of 
the art will have perished!' In the year 1811, he 
retired from general society. Toad-in-the-hole was 
no more seen in any public resort. "We missed him 
from his wonted haunts — ' nor up the lawn, nor at 
the wood was he.' By the side of the main conduit 
his listless length at noontide he would stretch, and 
pore upon the filth that muddled by. ' Even dogs,' 
this pensive moralist would say, ' are not what they 
were, sir — not what they should be. I remember in 
my grandfather's time that some dogs had an idea of 
murder. I have known a mastifi", sir, that lay in am- 
bush for a rival, yes, sir, and finally murdered him, 
with pleasing circumstances of good taste. I also was 
on intimate terms of acquaintance with a tom-cat that 
was an assassin. But now ' and then, the sub- 
ject growing too painful, he dashed his hand to his 



MURDER. 63 

forehead, and went off abruptly in a homeward direc- 
tion towards his favorite conduit, where he was seen 
bj' an amateur in such a state, that he thought it dan- 
gerous to address him. Soon after Toad shut himself 
entirely up ; it was understood that he had resigned 
himself to melancholy ; and at length the prevailing 
notion was, that Toad-in-the-hole had hanged himself. 
The world was wrong there, as it had been on some 
other questions. Toad-in-the-hole might be sleeping, 
but dead he was not ; and of that we soon had ocular 
proof. One morning in 1812, an amateiir surprised us 
Math the news that he had seen Toad-in-the-hole brush- 
ing with hasty steps the dews away, to meet the post- 
man by the conduit side. Even that Avas something : 
how much more, to hear that he had shaved his beard 
— had laid aside his sad-colored clothes, and was 
adorned like a bridegroom of ancient days. What 
could be the meaning of all this ? Was Toad-in-the- 
hole mad ? or how ? Soon after the secret was ex- 
plained — in more than a figurative sense ' the murder 
was out.' For in came the London morning papers, 
by which it appeared that but three days before a mur- 
der, the most superb of the century by many degrees, 
had occurred in the heart of London. I need hardly 
say, that this was the great exterminating chef-d'ceiivre 
of Williams at Mr. Marr's, No. 29 Ratcliffe Highway. 
That was the debut of the artist ; at least for anything 
the public knew. What occurred at Mr. Williamson's 
twelve nights afterwards — the second work turned out 
from the same chisel — some people pronounced even 
superior. But Toad-in-the-hole always ' reclaimed,* 
he was even angry, at such comparisons. ' This vulgar 
gotU de comparaison, as La Bruyere calls it,' he would 



64 MtTEDEK. 

often remark, ' will be our ruin ; each work has its own 
separate characteristics — each in and for itself is in- 
comparable. One perhaps might suggest the ' Iliad ' 

— the other the ' Odyssey : ' but what do you get by 
such comparisons ? Neither ever was, or will be sur- 
passed ; and when you've talked for hours, you must 
etill come back to that.' Vain, however, as all criti- 
cism might be, he often said that volumes might be 
written on each case for itself; and he even proposed 
to publish in quarto on the subject. 

Meantime, how had Toad-in-the-hole happened to 
hear of this great work of art so early in the morning? 
He had received an account by express, despatched by 
a correspondent in London, who watched the progress 
of art on Toad's behalf, with a general commission to 
send off a special express, at whatever cost, in the event 
of any estimable works appearing. The express ar- 
rived in the night-time ; Toad-in-the-hole Avas then 
gone to bed ; he had been muttering and grumbling 
for hours, but of course he was called up. On reading 
the account, he threw his arms round the express, de- 
clared him his brother and his preserver, and expressed 
his regret at not having it in his power to knight him. 
We, amateurs, having heard that he was abroad, and 
therefore had not hanged himself, made sure of soon 
seeing him amongst us. Accordingly he soon arrived ; 
seized every man's hand as he passed him — wrung it 
almost frantically, and kept ejaculating, ' Why, now, 
here's something like a murder ! — this is the real thing 

— this is genuine — this is what you can approve, can 
recommend to a friend : this — says every man, on 
reflection — this is the thing that ought to be ! Such 
works are enough to make us all young.' And in fact 



MURDEK. 05 

the general opinion is, tliat Toad-in-the-hole would 
have died but for this regeneration of art, which he 
called a second age of Leo the Tenth ; and it was 
our duty, he said, solemnly to commemorate it. At 
present, and en attendant, he proposed that the club 
should meet and dine together. A dinner, therefore, 
was given by the club ; to which all amateurs were in- 
vited from a distance of one hundred miles. 

Of this dinner, there are ample short-hand notes 
amongst the archives of the club. But they are not 
' extended,' to speak diplomatically ; and the reporter, 
who only could give the whole report in extenso, is 
missing — I believe murdered. Meantime, in years 
long after that day, and on an occasion perhaps equally 
interesting, viz., the turning up of Thugs and Thug- 
gism, another dinner was given. Of this I myself kept 
notes, for fear of another accident to the short-hand 
reporter. And I here subjoin them. Toad-in-the-hole, 
I must mention, was present at this dinner. In fact, 
it was one of its sentimental incidents. Being as old 
as the valleys at the dinner of 1812, naturally he was 
as old as the hills at the Thug dinner of 1838. He 
had taken to wearing his beard again ; why, or with 
what view, it passes my persimmon to tell you. But 
so it was. And his appearance was most benign and 
venerable. Nothing could equal the angelic radiance 
of his smile, as he inquired after the unfortunate re- 
porter (whom, as a piece of private scandal, I should 
tell you that he was himself supposed to have mur- 
dered, in a rapture of creative art) : the answer was, 
with roars of laughter, from the under-sheriff of our 
county — ' No7i est inventus.' Toad-in-the-hole laugh- 
ed outrageously at this : in fact, we all thought he was 
6 



66 MTTRDEH. 

choking ; and, at the earnest request of the company, a 
musical composer furnished a most beautiful glee upon 
the occasion, which was sung five times after dinner, 
with universal applause and inextinguishable laughter, 
the words being these (and the chorus so contrived, as 
most beautifully to mimic the peculiar laughter of 
Toad-in-the-hole) : — 

' Et interrogatum est k Toad-in-the-hole — Ubi est ille reporter ? 
Et responsum est cum cachinno — JVon est inventus.' 

Chorus. 
• Deinde iteratum est ah omnibus, cum cachumatione undulante 
trepidante — JVoa est inventus.' 

Toad-in-the-hole, I ought to mention, about nine 
years before, when an express from Edinburgh brought 
him the earliest intelligence of the Burke-and-Hare 
revolution in the art, went mad upon the spot ; and, in- 
stead of a pension to the express for even one life, or a 
knighthood, endeavored to Burke him ; in consequence 
of which he was put into a strait- waistcoat. And that 
was the reason we had no dinner then. But now all 
of us were alive and kicking, strait-wasitcoaters and 
others ; in fact, not one absentee was reported upon 
the entire roll. There were also many foreign ama- 
teurs present. 

Dinner being over, and the cloth drawn, there was 
a general call made for the new glee of Non est inven- 
tus ; but, as this would have interfered with the requi- 
site gravity of the company during the earlier toasts, 
I overruled the call. After the national toasts had 
been given, the first ofiicial toast of the day was, The 
Old Man of the Mountains — drunk in solemn silence. 

Toad-in-the-hole returned thanks in a neat speech. 



MTTRDEB. 67 

He likened nimself to the Old Man of the Moun- 
tains, in a few brief allusions, that made the company 
yell with laughter ; and he concluded with giving the 
health of 

Mr. Von Hammer, with many thanks to him for his 
learned History of the Old Man and his subjects the 
assassins. 

Upon this I rose and said, that doubtless most of the 
company were aware of the distinguished place as- 
signed by orientalists to the very learned Turkish 
scholar. Von Hammer the Austrian ; that he had made 
the profoundest researches into our art, as connected 
with those early and eminent artists, the Syrian assas- 
sins in the period of the Crusaders ; that his work had 
been for several years deposited, as a rare treasure of 
art, in the library of the club. Even the author's 
name, gentlemen, pointed him out as the historian of 
our art — "Von Hammer 

' Yes, yes,' interrupted Toad-in-the-hole, ' Von 
Hammer — he's the man for a malleus hcereticorum. 
You all know what consideration Williams bestowed 
on the hammer, or the ship-carpenter's mallet, which 
is the same thing. Gentlemen, I give you another 
great hammer — Charles the Hammer, the Marteau, or, 
in old French, the Martel — he hammered the Saracens 
till they were all as dead as door-nails.' 

' Charles the Hammer, with all the honors.' 

But the explosion of Toad-in-the-hole, together 
with the uproarious cheers for the grandpapa of Char- 
lemagne, had now made the company unmanageable. 
The orchestra was again challenged with shouts the 
stormiest for the new glee. I foresaw a tempestuous 
evening ; and 1 ordered myself to be strengthened with 



68 MTTKDER. 

three waiters on each side ; the vice-president with as 
many. Symptoms of unruly enthusiasm were beginning 
to show out ; and I own that I myself was consider- 
ably excited, as the orchestra opened with its storm 
of music, and the impassioned glee began — ' Et in- 
terrogatum est a Toad-in-the-hole — Ubi est ille Re- 
porter ? ' And the frenzy of the passion became 
absolutely convulsing, as the full chorus fell in — ' Et 
iteratum est ab omnibus — Non est inventus.' 

The next toast was — The Jewish Sicarii. 

Upon which I made the following explanation to 
the company : — ' Gentlemen, I am sure" it will interest 
you all to hear that the assassins, ancient as they were, 
had a race of predecessors in the veiy same country. 
All over Syria, but particularly in Palestine, during 
the early years of the Emperor Nero, there was a band 
of murderers, Avho prosecuted their studies in a very 
novel manner. They did not practise in the night- 
time, or in lonely places ; but, justly considering that 
great crowds are in themselves a sort of darkness by 
means of the dense pressure, and the impossibility of 
finding out who it was that gave the blow, they 
mingled with mobs everywhere ; particularly at the 
great paschal feast in Jerusalem ; where they actually 
had the audacity, as Josephus assures us, to press into 
the temple — and whom should they choose for operat- 
ing upon but Jonathan himself, the Pontifex Maximus ? 
They murdered him, gentlemen, as beautifully as if 
they had had him alone on a moonless night in a dark 
lane. And when it was asked, who was the murderer, 
and where he was ' 

' Why then, it was answered,' interrupted Toad-in- 
the-hole, " Non est inventus," ' And then, in spite of 



MURDEB. 69 

all I could do or say, the orchestra opened, and the 
whole company began — ' Et interrogatum est a Toad- 
in-the-holc — Ubi est ille Sicarius ? Et responsum est 
ab omnibus — Non est inventus.' 

When the tempestuous chorus had subsided, I be- 
gan again : — ' Gentlemen, you will find a very cir- 
cumstantial account of the Sicarii in at least three 
different parts of Josephus ; once in Book XX., sec. 
V. c. 8, of his " Antiquities ; " once in Book I. of his 
" Wars : " but in sec. x. of the chapter first cited you 
M-ill find a particular description of their tooling. This 
is what he says : — " They tooled with small scimitars 
not much diffei'ent from the Persian acinaccs, but 
more curved, and for all the world most like the Bo- 
man semi-lunar sicce." It is perfectly magnificent, 
gentlemen, to hear the sequel of their history. Per- 
haps the only case on record where a regular army of 
murderers was assembled, a Justus exercitus, was in 
the case of these Sicarii. They mustered in such 
strength in the wilderness, that Festus himself was 
obliged to march against them with the Boman legion- 
ary force. A pitched battle ensued ; and this army of 
amateurs was all cut to pieces in the desert. Heavens, 
gentlemen, what a sublime picture ! The Boman 
legions — the wilderness — Jerusalem in the distance 
— an army of murderers in the foreground ! ' 

The next toast was — ' To the further improvement 
of Tooling, and thanks to the committee for their ser- 
vices.' 

Mr. L., on behalf of the Committee who had report- 
ed on that subject, returned thanks. He made an 
interesting extract from the report, by which it appear- 
ed how verv much stress had been laid formerly on 



70 MITKDEH. 

the mode of tooling by the fathers, both Greek and 
Latin. In confirmation of this pleasing fact, he made 
a very striking statement in reference to the earliest 
work of antediluvian art. Father Mersenne, that 
learned French Roman Catholic, in page one thousand 
four hundred and thirty-one i" of his operose Commen- 
tary on Genesis, mentions, on the authority of several 
rabbis, that the quarrel of Cain Avith Abel was about a 
young woman ; that, according to the various accounts, 
Cain had tooled with his teeth (Abelem fuisse morsihus 
dilaceratum a Cain) ; according to many others, with 
the jaw-bone of an ass, which is the tooling adopted 
by most painters. But it is pleasing to the mind of 
sensibility to know that, as science expanded, sounder 
views were adopted. One author contends for a pitch- 
fork, St. Chrysostom for a sword, IreniBus for a scythe, 
and Prudentius, the Christian poet of the fourth cen- 
tury, for a hedging-bill. This last writer delivers his 
opinion thus : — 

' Frater, probatae sanctitatis aemiilus, 
Germana curvo coUa frangit sarculo : ' 

i. e., his brother, jealous of his attested sanctity, frac- 
tures his fraternal throat with a curved hedging-bill. 
' All which is respectfully submitted by your com- 
mittee, not so much as decisive of the question (for it 
is not), but in ordtr to impress upon the youthful mind 
the importance which has ever been attached to the 
quality of the tooling by such men as Chrysostom and 
Irenseus.* 

' Irenaeus be hanged ! ' said Toad-in-the-hole, who 
now rose impatientiy to give the next toast : — ' Our 
Irish friends ; wishing them a speedy revolution in 



MUKDEB. 71 

their mode of tooling, as well as in everything else con- 
nected with the art ! ' 

' Gentlemen, I'll tell you the plain truth. Every 
day of the year we take up a paper, we read the open- 
ing of a murder. We say, tliis is good, this is charm- 
ing, this is excellent ! But, behold you ! scarcely have 
we read a little farther, before the word Tipperary or 
Ballina-something betrays the Irish manufacture. In- 
stantly we loathe it ; we call to the waiter ; we say, 
" waiter, take aAvay this paper ; send it_ out of the 
house ; it is absolutely a scandal in the nostrils of all 
just taste." I appeal to every man, whether, on find- 
ing a murder (otherwise perhaps promising enough) to 
be Irish, he does not feel himself as much insulted as 
when, Madeira being ordered, he finds it to be Cape ; 
or when, taking up what he takes to be a mushroom, 
it turns out what children call a toad-stool. Tithes, 
politics, something wrong in principle, vitiate every 
Irish murder. Gentlemen, this must be reformed, or 
Ireland mil not be a land to live in ; at least, if we do 
live there, we must import all our murders, that's 
clear.' Toad-in-the-hole sat down, growling with 
suppressed wrath ; and the uproarious ' Hear, hear J ' 
clamorously expressed the general concurrence. 

The next toast was — ' The sublime epoch of Burk* 
ism and Harism ! ' 

This was drunk with enthusiasm ; and one of the 
members, who spoke to the question, made a very 
curious communication to the company : — ' Gentle- 
men, we fancy Burkism to be a pure invention of our 
own times : and in fact no Pancirollus has ever enu- 
merated this branch of art when writing de rebus 
deperditis. Still, I have ascertained that the essential 



72 MTTEDER. 

principle of tHs variety in the art was known to the 
ancients ; although, like the art of painting upon glass, 
of making the myrrhine cups, &c., it was lost in the 
dark ages for want of encouragement. In the famous 
collection of Greek epigrams made by Planudes, is one 
upon a very fascinating case of Burkism : it is a per- 
fect little gem of art. The epigram itself I cannot lay 
my hand upon at this moment ; but the following is 
an abstract of it by Salmasius, as I find it in his notes 
on Vopiscus : " Est et elegans epigramma Lucilii, ubi 
medicus et pollinctor de comphcto sic egerunt, ut 
medicus segros omnes curse suae commissos occideret : 
this was the basis of the contract, you see, that on the 
one part the doctor, for himself and his assigns, doth 
undertake and contract duly and truly to murder all 
the patients committed to his charge : but why ? 
There lies the beauty of the case — Et ut pollinctori 
amico suo traderet pollingendos." The pollinctor, 
you are aware, was a person whose business it was to 
dress and prepare dead bodies for burial. The orginal 
ground of the transaction appears to have been senti- 
mental : " He was my friend," says the murderous 
doctor; "he was dear to me," in speaking of the pol- 
linctor. But the law, gentlemen, is stern and harsh : 
the law will not hear of these tender motives : to sus- 
tain a contract of this nature in law, it is essential that 
a " consideration " should be given. Now what was 
the consideration ? For thus far all is on the side of 
the pollinctor : he will be well paid for his services ; 
but, meantime, the generous, the noble-minded doc- 
tor gets nothing. What was the equivalent, again I 
ask, which the law would insist on the doctor's taking, 
in order to establish that " consideration," without 



MUBDEK. 73 

which the contract had no force ? You shall hear : 
" Et ut pollinctor vicissim rcXau<r>vag quos furabatar de 
pollinctione mortuorum medico mitteret donis ad alli- 
ganda vulnera corum quos curabat ; " i. e., and that 
reciprocally the pollinctor should transmit to the phy- 
sician, as free gifts for the binding-up of wounds in 
those whom he treated medically, the belts or trusses 
(rfAaMwios) which he had succeeded in purloining in 
the course of his functions about the corpses. 

' Now, the case is clear : the whole went on a prin- 
ciple of reciprocity which would have kept up the 
trade for ever. The doctor was also a surgeon : he 
could not murder all his patients : some of the pa- 
tients must be retained intact. For these he wanted 
linen bandages. But, unhappily, the Romans wore 
woollen, on which account it was that they bathed so 
often. Meantime, there was linen to be had in Rome ; 
but it was monstrously dear ; and the nXa^iwrag, or 
linen swathing bandages, in which superstition obliged 
them to bind up corpses, would answer capitally for 
the surgeon. The doctor, therefore, contracts to fur- 
nish his friend with a constant succession of corpses, 
provided, and be it understood always, that his said 
friend, in return, should supply him with one-half of 
the articles he would receive from the friends of the 
parties murdered or to be murdered. The doctor 
invariably recommended his invaluable friend the 
pollinctor (whom let us call the undertaker) ; the 
undertaker, with equal regard to the sacred rights of 
friendship, uniformly recommended the doctor. Like 
Pyladcs and Orestes, they were models of a perfect 
friendship : in their lives they were lovely : and on 
the gallows, it is to be hoped, they were not divided. 
7 



74 MCEDEB. 

' Gentlemen, it makes me laugh torribly, when I 
think of those two friends drawing and re-drawing oa 
each other : " Pollinctor in account with Doctor, debtor 
by sixteen corpses : creditor by forty-five bandages, 
two of which damaged." Their names unfortunately 
we lost ; but I conceive they must have been Quintua 
Burkius and Publius Harius. By the way, gentle- 
men, has anybody heard lately of Hare ? I understand 
he is comfortably settled in Ireland, considerably to 
the west, and does a little business now and then ; 
but, as he observes with a sigh, only as a retailer — 
nothing like the fine thriving wholesale concern so 
carelessly blown up at Edinburgh. " You see what 
comes of neglecting business" — is the chief moral, 
the tTitj^v&iov, as iEsop would say, which Hare draws 
from his past experience.' 

At length came the toast of the day — Thugdom in 
all its branches. 

The speeches attempted at this crisis of the dinner 
were past all counting. But the applause was so 
furious, the music so stormy, and the crashing of 
glasses so incessant, from the general resolution never 
again to drink an inferior toast from the same glass, 
that I am unequal to the task of reporting. Besides 
which, Toad-in-the-hole now became ungovernable. 
He kept firing pistols in every direction ; sent his 
servant for a blunderbuss, and talked of loading with 
ball-cartridge. We conceived that his former madness 
had returned at the mention of Burke and Hare ; or 
that, being again weary of life, he had resolved to go 
ofi" in a general massacre. This we could not think 
of allowing; it became indispensable, therefore, to 
kick him out ; which we did with universal consent, 



MXTBDEB. 75 

the whole company lending their toes uno pede, as I 
may say, though pitying his gray hairs and his angelic 
smile. During the operation, the orchestra poured in 
their old chorus. The universal company sang, and 
(what surprised us most of all) Toad-in-the-hole 
joined us furiously in singing — 

' Et interrogatum est ab omnibus — Ubi est ille Toad-in-tho- 

hole? 
£t responsum est ab omnibus — J\i'on est inventiu * 



NOTES. 

Note 1. Page 20. 
Kant — who carried his demands of unconditional veracily 
to so extravagant a length as to af&rm, that, if a man were to 
Bee an innocent person escape from a murderer, it would be his 
duty, on being questioned by the murderer, to tell the truth, and 
to point out the retreat of the innocent person, under any cer- 
tainty of causing murder. Lest this doctrine should be supposed 
to have escaped him in any heat of dispute, on being taxed with 
it by a celebrated French writer, he solemnly re-affirmed it, with 
his reasons. 

Note 2. Page 26. 
The passage occurs in the second part (act 3) of 'Henry 
VI.,' and is doubly remarkable — first, for its critical fidelity to 
nature, were the description meant only for poetic effect ; but, 
secondly, for the judicial value impressed upon it when offered 
(as here it is offei'ed) in silent corroboration legally of a di'eadful 
whisper all at once arising, that foul play had been dealing with 
a great prince, clothed with an official state character. It is the 
Duke of Gloucester, faithful guardian and loving uncle of the 
simple and imbecile king, who has been found dead in his bed. 
How shall this event be interpreted ' Had he died under some 
natural visitation of Providence, or by violence from his ene- 
mies ? The two court factions read the circumstantial indications 
of the case into opposite constructions. The affectionate and 
afflicted young king, whose position almost pledges him to 
neutrality, cannot, nevertheless, disguise his overwhelming sus- 
picions of hellish conspiracy in the background. Upon this, a 
leader of the queen's faction endeavors to break the force of this 
royal frankness, countersigned and echoed most impressively by 






NOTES. 77 

Lord TVarwick. 'What instance,' he asks — meaning by tn- 
ttance not example or illustration, as thoughtless commentators 
have constantly supposed, but in the common scholastic sense — 
what instantiaf what pressure of argument, what urgent plea, 
can Loi'd Warwick put forward in support of his ' dreadful 
oath ' — an oath, namely, that, as surely as he hopes for the life 
eternal, so surely 

• I do believe that violent hands were laid 
Upon the life of this thrice-fam6d duke.' 

Ostensibly tlie challenge is to Warwick, but substantially it ia 
meant for the king. And the reply of Wai-wick, the argument 
on which he builds, lies in a solemn array of all the changes 
worked in the duke's features by death, as irreconcilable with 
any other hypothesis than that this death had been a violent one. 
What argument have I that Gloucester died under the hands of 
murderers ? Why, the following roll-call of awful changes, 
affecting liead, face, nostrils, eyes, hands, &c., which do not be- 
long inditferently to any mode of death, but exclusively to a 
death by violence : — 

• But see, his face is black and full of blood; 
His eyeballs farther out than when he lived. 
Staring full ghastly, like a strangled man; 
His hair uprear'd, his nostrils stretch'd with struggling; 
His hands abroad display'd, as one that grasp'd 
And tugg'd for life, and was by strength subdued. 
Look on the sheets : — his hair, you see, is sticking; 
His well-pi'oportion'd beard made rough and rugged. 
Like to the summer's corn by tempest lodged. 
It cannot be but he was mui'dcr'd here; 
The least of all these signs were probable.' 

As the logic of the case, let us not for a moment forget, that, to 
be of any value, the signs and indications pleaded must be 
sternly diagnostic. The discrimination sought for is between 
death that is natural, and death that is violent. All indications, 
therefore, that belong equally and indifferently to either, are 
equivocal, useless, and alien from the very purpose of the signa 
here registered by Shakspeare. 



.78 . NOIES. 



Note 3. Page 26. 
At the time of writing this, I held the common opinion upon 
that subject. Mei'e inconsideration it was that led to so erro- 
neous a judgment. Since then, on closer reflection, I have seen 
ample reason to retract it : satisfied I now am, that the Romans, 
in evei'y art which allowed to them any parity of advantages, had 
merits as racy, native, and characteristic, as the best of the 
Greeks. Elsewhere I shall plead this cause circumstantially, 
with the hope of converting the reader. In the meantime, I waa 
anxious to lodge my protest against this ancient error ; an error 
which commenced in the time-serving sycophancy of Virgil, the 
court-poet. With the base purpose of gratifying Augustus in 
his vindictive spite against Cicero, and by way of introducing, 
therefore, the little clause orabunt Causas melius as applying 
to all Athenian against all Roman orators, Virgil did not scruple 
to sacrifice by wholesale the just pretensions of his compatriots 
collectively. 

Note 4. Page 33. 
This same argument has been employed at least once too 
often. Some centuries back a dauphin of France, when admon- 
ished of his risk from small-pox, made the same demand as the 
emperor — ' Had any gentleman heard of a dauphin killed by 
Bmall-pox ? ' No ; not any gentleman had heard of such a case. 
And yet, for all that, this dauphin died of that same small-pox. 

Note 5. Page 33. 
'June 1, 1675. — Drinke part of three boules of punch (a 
liquor very strainge to me),' says the Rev. Mr. Henry Teonge, 1 
in his Diary published by C. Knight. In a note on this passage, f 
a reference is made to Fryer's Travels to the East Indies, 1672, 
who speaks of ' that enervating liquor called paunch (which ia 
Hindostanee for five), from five ingredients.' Made thus, it 
seems the medical men called it diapente; if with four only, 
diatessaron. No doubt, it was this evangelical name that recom- 
mended it to the Rev. Mr. Teonge. 



A 



NOTES. 79 



Note 6. Page 87. 
Chatsworth was then, as now, the superb seat of the Caven- 
dishes in their highest branch — in those days Earl, at present 
Duke, of Devonshire. It is to the hon?r of this family that, 
through two generations, tliey gave an asylum to Hobbes. It is 
noticeable that Ilobbes was born in the year of the Spanish Ar- 
mada, i. e., in 1588 : such, at least, is my belief And, there- 
fore, at this meeting with Tennison in 1670, he must have beeu 
about 82 years old. 

Note 7. Page 40. 

* Spjtal Sermons : ' — Dr. Parr's chief public appearances as 
an author, after his original appearance in the fxmous Latin 
preface to Bellendenus (don't say Bellendenus), occurred in cer- 
tain Sermons at periodic intervals, delivered on behalf of some 
hospital (I really forget what) which retained for its official de- 
signation the old word Spital ; and thus it happened that the 
Sermons themselves were generally known by the title of Spital 
Sermons. 

Note 8. Page 54. 
Abraham Newland is now utterly forgotten. But when this 
was written, his name had not ceased to ring in British ears, as 
the most familiar and most significant that perhaps has ever ex- 
isted. It was the name which appeared on the face of all Bank 
of England notes, great or small; and had been, for more than a 
quarter of a century (especially through the whole career of the 
French Revolution), a short-hand expression for paper money in 
its safest form. 

Note 9. Page 58. 
Her Majesty : — In the lecture, having occasion to refer to the 
reigning sovereign, I said ^ His Majesty;' for at that time 
William IV. was on the throne : bat between the lecture and thia 
supplement had occurred the accession of our present Queen. 

Note 10. Page 70. 

• Page one thousand four hundred and thirty -one:' — literally, 
good reader, and no joke at all. 



JOAN OF ARC/ 

IN REFERENCE TO M. MICHELET'S HISTORY OF 
FRANCE. 

What is to be thouglit of lier 7 What is to be 
thought of the poor shepherd girl from the hills and 
forests of Lorraine, that — like the Hebrew shepherd 
boy from the hills and forests of Judoea — rose sud- 
denly out of the quiet, ovit of the safety, out of the re- 
ligious inspiration, rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to 
a station in the van of armies, and to the more perilous 
station at the right hand of kings ? The Hebrew boy 
inaugurated his patriotic mission by an act, by a victo- 
rious act, such as no man could deny. But so did the 
girl of Lorraine, if we read her story as it was read by 
those who saw her nearest. Adverse armies bore wit- 
ness to the boy as no pretender ; but so they did to 
the gentle girl. Judged by the voices of all who saw 
them from a station of good-will, both were found true 
and loyal to any promises involved in their first acts. 
Enemies it was that made the difference between their 
subsequent fortunes. The boy rose to a splendor and 
a noonday prosperity, both personal and public, that 
rang through the records of his people, and became a 
by-word amongst his posterity foj a thousand years, 
until the sceptre was departing from Judah. The poor, 
forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not herself -from 
that cup of rest which she had seciircd for France. 
She never sang together with the songs that rose in her 

[81] 



82 JOAN OF AKC. 

native Domremy, as echoes to tlie departing steps of 
invaders. She mingled not in the festal dances at 
Vaucouleurs which, celebrated in rapture the redemp- 
tion of France. No ! for her voice was then silent : 
no ! for her feet were dust. Pure, innocent, noble- 
hearted girl ! whom, from earliest youth, ever I be- 
lieved in as full of truth and self-sacrifice, this was 
amongst the strongest pledges for thy truth, that nevex 
once — no, not for a moment of weakness — didst thou 
revel in the vision of coronets and honor from man. 
Coronets for thee ! O no ! Honors, if they come when 
all is over, are for those that share thy blood.^ Daugh- 
ter of Domremy, when the gratitude of thy king shall 
awaken, thou wilt be sleeping the sleep of the dead. 
Call her. King of France, but she will not hear thee I 
Cite her by thy apparitors to come and receive a robe 
of honor, but she will be found en contumace. When 
the thunders of universal France, as even yet may hap- 
pen, shall proclaim the grandeur of the poor shepherd 
girl that gave up all for her country, thy ear, young 
shepherd girl, will have been deaf for five centuries. 
To sufi"er and to do, that was thy portion in this life ; 
that was thy destiny ; and not for a moment was it 
hidden from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short : and 
the sleep which is in the grave is long ! Let me use 
that life, so transitory, for the glory of those heavenly 
dreams destined to comfort the sleep which is so long. 
This pure creature — pure from every suspicion of 
even a visionary self-interest, even as she was pure in 
senses more obvious — never once did this holy child, 
as regarded herself, relax from her belief in the dark- 
ness that was travelling to meet her. She might not 
prefigure the very manner of her death ; she saw not 



1 



JOAN OF AEC. 88 

in vision, perhaps, the aerial altitude of the fiery scaf- 
fold, the spectators without end on every road pouring 
into Rouen as to a coronation, the surging smoke, the 
volleying flames, the hostile faces all around, the pity- 
ing eye that lurked but here and there, until nature 
and imperishable truth broke loose from artificial 
restraints ; — these might not be apparent through the 
mists of the hurrying future. But the vioice that 
called her to death, that she heard for ever. 

Great was the throne of France even in those days, 
and great was he that sat upon it : but Avell Joanna 
knew that not the throne, nor he that sat upon it, was 
for her ; but, on the contrary, that she was for them ; 
not she by them, but they by her, should rise from the 
dust. Gorgeous were the lilies of France, and for cen- 
turies had the privilege to spread their beauty over 
land and sea, until, in another century, the wrath of 
God and man combined to wither them ; but well 
Joanna knew, early at Domremy she had read that 
bitter truth, that the lilies of France would decorate 
no garland for her. Flower nor bud, bell nor blossom, 
would ever bloom for her. 

But stay. What reason is there for taking up this 
subject of Joanna precisely in the spring of 1847? 
Might it not have been left till the spring of 1947 ; or, 
perhaps, left till called for ? Yes, but it is called for ; 
and clamorously. You are aware, reader, that amongst 
the many original thinkers whom modern France has 
produced, one of the reputed leaders is M. Michelet. 
All these writers are of a revolutionary cast ; not in a 
political sense merely, but in all senses ; mad, often- 
times, as March hares ; crazy with the laughing gas of 



84 JOAN OF ABC. 

recovered liberty ; drunk witli the wine-cup of theif 
mighty revolution, snorting, whinnying, throwing up 
their heels, like wild horses in the boundless Pampas, 
and running races of defiance with snipes, or with the 
winds, or with their own shadows, if they can find 
nothing else to challenge. Some time or other I, that 
have leisure to read, may introduce yoit, that have not, 
to two or three dozen of these writers ; of whom I can 
assure you beforehand, that they are often profound, 
and at intervals are even as impassioned as if they 
were come of our best English blood. But now, con- 
fining our attention to M. Michelet, we in England — 
who know him best by his Avorst book, the book 
against priests, &c. — know him disadvantageously. 
That book is a rhapsody of incoherence. But his 
* History of France ' is quite another thing. A 
man, in whatsoever craft he sails, cannot stretch 
away out of sight when he is linked to the windings 
of the shore by towing ropes of history. Facts, and 
the consequences of facts, draw the writer back to the 
falconer's lure from the giddiest heights of speculation. 
Here, therefore — in his ' France ' — if not always free 
from flightiness, if now and then ofi" like a rocket for 
an airy wheel in the clouds, M. Michelet, with natural 
politeness, never forgets that he has left a large audi- 
ence waiting for him on earth, and gazing upwards in 
anxiety for his return : return, therefore, he does. 
But history, though clear of certain temptations in one 
direction, has separate dangers of its own. It is im- 
possible so to write a history of France, or of England 
— works becoming every hour more indispensable to 
the inevitably-political man of this day — without per- 
ilous openings for error. If I, for instance, on ths part 



JOAN OF ABC. 85 

of England, should happen to turn my labors in that 
channel, and (on the model of Lord Percy going to 
Chevy Chase) 

' A vow to God should make 
My pleasure in the Michelet woods 
Thi'ee summer days to take,' 

probably, from simple delirium, I might hunt M. 
Michelet into delirium tremens. Two strong angels 
Btand by the side of history, whether French history or 
English, as heraldic supporters : the angel of research 
on the left hand, that must read millions of dusty 
parchments, and of pages blotted with lies ; the angel 
of meditation on the right hand, that must cleanse these 
lying records with fire, even as of old the draperies of 
asbestos were cleansed, and must quicken them into 
regenerated life. Willingly I acknowledge that no 
man •vNdll ever avoid innumerable errors of detail ; with 
so vast a compass of ground to traverse, this is impos- 
sible ; but such errors (though I have a bushel on 
hand, at M. Michelet' s service) are not the game I 
chase ; it is the bitter and unfair spirit in which M. 
Michelet ^vrites against England. Even that, after all 
is but my secondary object ; the real one is Joanna 
the Pucelle d' Orleans for herself. 

I am not going to write the History of La Pucelle : 
to do this, or even circumstantially to report the his- 
tory of her persecution and bitter death, of her strug- 
gle with false witnesses and with ensnaring judges, it 
would be necessary to have before us all the docu- 
ments, and therefore the collection only 3 now forth- 
coming in Paris. But my purpose is narrower. There 
have been great thinkers, disdaining the careless judg- 
ments of contemporaries, who have thrown themselvej 



86 JOAN OF ARC. 

boldly on the judgment of a far posterity, that should 
have had time to review, to ponder, to compare. There 
have been great actors on the stage of tragic humanity 
that might with the same depth of confidence, have 
appealed from the levity of compatriot friends — too 
heartless for the sublime interest of their story, and 
too impatient for the labor of sifting its perplexities — 
to the magnanimity and justice of enemies. To this 
class belongs the Maid of Arc. The ancient Romans 
were too faithful to the ideal of grandeur in themselves 
not to relent, after a generation or two, before the 
grandeur of Hannibal. Mithridates — a more doubt- 
ful person — yet merely for the magic perseverance of 
his indomitable malice, won from the same Romans the 
only real honor that ever he received on earth. And 
we English have ever shown the same homage to stub- 
born enmity. To work unflinchingly for the ruin of 
England ; to say through life, by word and by deed, 
Delenda est Anglia Victrix ! that one purpose of mal- 
ice, faithfully pursued, has quartered some people upon 
our national funds of homage as by a perpetual annu- 
ity. Better than an inheritance of service rendered 
to England herself, has sometimes proved the most 
insane hatred to England. Hyder Ali, even his son 
Tippoo, though so far inferior, and Napoleon, have all 
benefited by this disposition amongst ourselves to ex- 
aggerate the merit of diabolic enmity. Not one of 
these men was ever capable, in a solitary instance, of 
praising an enemy [what do you say to that, reader ?], 
and yet in their behalf, we consent to forget, not theii 
crimes only, but (which is worse) their hideous bigotry 
and anti-magnanimous egotism, for nationality it was 
not. Suffrein, and some half dozen of other French 



JOAir OF AUG. 87 

nautical heroes, because rightly they did us all the 
mischief they could (which was really great), are names 
justly reverenced in England. On the same principle, 
La Pucelle d' Orleans, the victorious enemy of England, 
has been destined to receive her deepest commemora- 
tion from the magnanimous justice of Englishmen. 

Joanna, as we in England should call her, but, accord- 
ing to her own statement, Jeanne (or, as M. Michelet 
asserts, Jean^) D'Arc, was born at Domremy, a vil- 
lage on the marches of Lorraine and Champagne, and 
dependent upon the town of Vaucouleurs. I have 
called her a Lorrainer, not simply because the word 
is prettier, but because Champagne too odiously re- 
minds us English of Avhat are for us imaginary wines, 
which, undoubtedly. La Pucelle tasted as rarely as we 
English ; we English, because the Champagne of Lon- 
don is chiefly grown in Devonshire ; La Pucelle, be- 
cause the Champagne of Champagne never, by any 
chance, flowed into the fountain of Domremy, from 
which only she drank. M. Michelet will have her to 
be a Champenoise, and for no better reason than that 
she ' took after her father,' who happened to be a Cham,' 
penois. 

These disputes, however, turn on refinements too 
nice. Domremy stood upon the frontiers, and, like 
other frontiers, produced a mixed race representing the 
cis and the trans. A river (it is true) formed the 
boundary-line at this point — the river Mouse ; and 
that, in old days, might have divided the populations ; 
but in these days it did not : there were bridges, there 
were ferries, and weddings crossed from the right bank 
to the left. Here lay two great roads, not so much 
for travellers that were few, as for armies that were 



88 JOAK OF ARC. 

too many by half. These two roads, one of whicn 
■was the great high road between France and Germany, 
decussated at this very point ; which is a learned way 
of saying, that they formed a St. Andrew's cross, or 
letter X. I hope the compositor will choose a good 
large X, in which case the point of intersection, the 
locus of conflux and intersection for these four diverg- 
ing arms, will finish the reader's geographical educa- 
tion, by showing him to a hair's-breadth where it was 
that Domremy stood. Those roads, so grandly situa- 
ted, as great trunk arteries between two mighty 
realms, 5 and haunted for ever by wars, or rumors of 
wars, decussated (for anything I know to the contrary) 
absolutely under Joanna's bedroom window ; one roll- 
ing away to the right, past Monsieur D' Arc's old barn, 
and the other unaccountably preferring to sweep round 
that odious man's pigsty to the left. 

On whichever side of the border chance had thrown 
Joanna, the same love to France would have been nur- 
tured. For it is a strange fact, noticed by M. Michelet 
and others, that the Dukes of Bar and Lorraine had 
for generations pursued the policy of eternal warfare 
with France on their own account, yet also of eternal 
amity and league with France, in case anybody else 
presumed to attack her. Let peace settle upon France, 
and before long you might rely upon seeing the little 
vixen Lorraine flying at the throat of France. Let 
France be assailed by a formidable enemy, and in- 
stantly you saw a Duke of Lorraine insisting on hav- 
ing his own throat cut in support of France ; which 
favor accordingly was cheerfully granted to him in 
three great successive battles — twice by the English, 
"iz., at Crecy and Agincourt, once by the Sultan at 
Nicopolis. 



JOAN OF ARC. 89 

This sympathy with France during great eclipses, in 
those that during ordinary seasons were always teasing 
her with brawls and guerilla inroads^ strength,ened the 
natural piety to France of those that' were confessedly 
the children of her own house. The outposts of 
France, as one may call the great frontier provinces, 
were of all localities the most devoted to the Fleurs 
de Lys. To witness, at any great crisis, the generous 
devotion to these lilies of the little fiery cousin that 
in gentler weather was for ever tilting at the breast of 
France, could not but fan the zeal of France's legiti- 
mate daughters : whilst to occupy a post of honor on 
the frontiers against an old hereditary enemy of France, 
would naturally stimulate this zeal by a sentiment of 
martial pride, by a sense of danger always threatening, 
and of hatred always smouldering. That great four- 
headed road was a perpetual memento to patriotic 
ardor. To say, this way lies the road to Paris, and 
that other way to Aix-la-Chapelle — this to Prague, 
that to Vienna — nourished the warfare of the heart 
by daily ministrations of sense. The eye that watched 
for the gleams of lance or helmet from the hostile 
frontier, the ear that listened for the groaning of 
wheels, made the high road itself, with its relations to 
centres so remote, into a manual of patriotic duty. 

The situation, therefore, locally, of Joanna was full 
of profound suggestions to a heart that listened for the 
stealthy steps of change and fear that too surely were 
in motion. But, if the place were grand, the time, 
the burden of the time, was far more so. The air 
overhead in its upper chambers was hurtling with the 
obscure sound ; was dark with sullen fermenting of 
storms that had been gathering for a hundred and 
8 



90 yOAN OF AKC. 

thirty years. Tlie battle of Agincourt in Joanna's 
childhood had re-opened the wounds of France. Crecy 
and Poictiers, those withering overthrows for the 
chivalry of France, had, before Agincourt occurred, 
been tranquillized by more than half a century ; but 
this resurrection of their trumpet wails made the 
whole series of battles and endless skirmishes take 
their stations as parts in one drama. The graves that 
had closed sixty years ago, seemed to fly open in sym- 
pathy with a sorrow that echoed their own. The 
monarchy of France labored in extremity, rocked and 
reeled like a ship fighting with the darkness of mon- 
soons. The madness of the poor king (Charles VI.) 
falling in at such a crisis, like the case of women 
laboring in childbirth during the storming of a city, 
trebled the awfulness of the time. Even the wild 
story of the incident which had immediately occasioned 
the explosion of this madness — the case of a man 
unknown, gloomy, and perhaps maniacal himself, 
coming out of a forest at noonday, laying his hand 
upon the bridle of the king's horse, checking him for 
a moment to say, ' Oh, king, thou art betrayed,' and 
then vanishing, no man knew whither, as he had ap- 
peared for no man knew what — fell in with the uni- 
versal prostration of mind that laid France on her 
knees, as before the slow unweaving of some ancient 
prophetic doom. The famines, the extraordinary dis- 
eases, the insurrections of the peasantry up and down 
Europe — these were chords struck from the same 
mysterious harp ; but these were transitory chords. 
There have been others of deeper and more ominous 
sound. The termination of the Crusades, the destruc- 
tion of the Templars, the Papal interdicts, the tragedies 



JOAN OF AKC. 9l 

caused or suffered by the house of Anjou, and by the 
emperor — these were full of a more permanent signi- 
ficance. But, since then, the colossal figure of feudal- 
ism was seen standing, as it were, on tiptoe, at Crecy, 
for flight from earth : that was a revolution unparal- 
leled ; yet that was a trifle, hy comparison with the 
more fearful revolutions that were mining below the 
church. By her own internal schisms, by the abomi- 
nable spectacle of a double pope — so that no man, 
except through political bias, could even guess which 
was Heaven's vicegerent, and which the creature of 
hell — the church was rehearsing, as in still earlier 
forms she had already rehearsed, those vast rents in 
her foundations which no man should ever heal. 

These were the loftiest peaks of the cloudland in the 
skies, that to the scientific gazer first caught the colors 
of the new morning in advance. But the whole vast 
range alike of sweeping glooms overhead, dwelt upon 
all meditative minds, even upon those that could not 
distinguish the tendencies nor decipher the forms. It 
was, therefore, not her own age alone, as aff'ected by 
its immediate calamities, that lay with such weight 
upon Joanna's mind ; but her own age, as one section 
in a vast mysterious drama, unweaving through a cen- 
tury back, and drawing nearer continually to some 
dreadful crisis. Cataracts and rapids were heard 
roaring ahead ; and signs were seen far back, by help 
of old men's memories, which answered secretly to 
signs now coming forward on the eye, even as locks 
answer to keys. It was not wonderful that in such a 
haunted solitude, with such a haunted heart, Joanna 
should see angelic visions, and hear angelic voices. 
These voices whispered to her for ever the duty, self- 



92 JOAN 01" AEC. 

imposed, of delivering France. Five years she listened 
to these monitory voices with internal struggles. At 
length she could resist no longer. Doubt gave way ; 
and she left her home for ever in order to present her- 
self at the dauphin's court. 

The education of this poor girl was mean according 
to the present standard : was ineffably grand, accord- 
ing to a purer philosophic standard : and only not good 
for our age, because for us it would be unattainable. 
She read nothing, for she could not read ; but she had 
heard others read parts of the Roman martyrology. 
She wept in sympathy with the sad Misereres of the 
Komish church ; she rose to heaven with the glad tri- 
umphant Te Deums of Rome : she drew her comfort and 
her vital strength from the rites of the same church. 
But, next after these spiritual advantages, she owed most 
to the advantages of her situation. The fountain of Dom- 
remy was on the brink of a boundless forest ; and it wa3 
haunted to that degree by fairies, that the parish priest 
(cure) was obliged to read mass there once a-year, in 
order to keep them in any decent bounds. Fairies are< 
important, even in a statistical view: certain weeds 
mark poverty in the soil, fairies mark its solitude. Aa 
surely as the wolf retires before cities, does the fairy 
sequester herself from the haunts of the licensed vict- 
ualler. A village is too much for her nervous delicacy : 
at most, she can tolerate a distant view of a hamlet. 
We may judge, therefore, by the uneasiness and extra 
trouble which they gave to the parson, in what 
strength the fairies mustered at Domremy ; and, by a 
satisfactory consequence, how thinly sown with men 
and women must have been that region even in ita 
inhabited spots. But the forests of Domremy — those 



JOAN OF ARC. 93 

were the glories of the land : for in them abode mys- 
terious power and ancient secrets that towei-ed into 
tragic strength. ' Abbeys there were, and abbey 
windows,' — ' like Moorish temples of the Hindoos,* 
that exercised even princely power both in Lorraine 
and in the German Diets. These had their sweet bells 
that pierced the forests for many a league at matins 
or vespers, and each its o^vn dreamy legend. Few 
enough, and scattered enough, were these abbeys, so 
as in no degree to disturb the deep solitude of the 
region ; yet many enough to spread a network or awn- 
ing of Christian sanctity over what else might have 
seemed a heathen wilderness. This sort of religious 
talisman being secured, a man the most afraid of 
ghosts (like myself, suppose, or the reader) becomes 
armed into courage to wander for days in their sylvan 
recesses. The mountains of the Vosges, on the east- 
ern frontier of France, have never attracted much 
notice from Europe, except in 1813-14 for a few 
brief months, when they fell within Napoleon's line 
iof defence against the Allies. But they are interest- 
ing for this, amongst other features, that they do not, 
like some loftier ranges, repel woods : the forests and 
the hills are on sociable terms. Live and let live, is 
their motto. For this reason, in part, these tracts in 
Lorraine were a favorite hunting-ground Avith the 
Carlovingian princes. About six hundred years before 
Joanna's childhood, Charlemagne was known to have 
hunted there. That, of itself, was a grand incident 
in the traditions of a forest or a chase. In these vast 
forests, also, were to be found (if anywhere to be 
found) those mysterious fawns that tempted solitary 
hunters into visionary and perilous pursuits. Here 



94 JOAN- OF ARC. 

was seen (if anywhere seen) that ancient stag who 
was already nine hundred years old, but possibly a 
hundred or two more, when met by Charlemagne ; and 
the thing was put beyond doubt by the inscription 
upon his golden collar. I believe Charlemagne knight- 
ed the stag ; and, if ever he is met again by a king, he 
ought to be made an earl — or, being upon the marches 
of France, a marquis. Observe, I don't absolutely 
vouch for all these things : my own opinion varies. 
On a fine breezy forenoon I am audaciously sceptical ; 
but, as twilight sets in, my credulity grows steadily, 
till it becomes equal to anything that could be desired. 
And I have heard candid sportsmen declare that, out- 
side of these very forests, they laughed loudly at all 
the dim tales connected with their haunted solitudes ; 
but, on reaching a spot notoriously eighteen miles 
deep within them, they agreed with Sir Roger de Cov- 
erley, that a good deal might be said on both sides. 

Such traditions, or any others that (like the stag) 
connect distant generations with each other, are, for 
that cause, sublime ; and the sense of the shado^vy, 
connected with such appearances that reveal themselves 
or not according to circumstances, leaves a coloring of 
sanctity over ancient forests, even in those minds that 
utterly reject the legend as a fact. 

But, apart from all distinct stories of that order, in 
any solitary frontier between two great empires, as 
here, for instance, or in the desert between Syria and 
the Euphrates, there is an inevitable tendency in 
minds of any deep sensibility, to people the solitudes 
with phantom images of powers that were of old so 
vast. Joanna, therefore, in her quiet occupation of a 
shepherdess, would be led continually to brood over 



JOAN OF AEC. 95 

the ]K)litical condition of her country, by the traditions 
of tho past no less tlian by the mementoes of the local 
present. 

M. jMichelet, indeed, says that La Pucelle was 7iot a 
shepherdess. I beg his pardon : she was. What he 
rests upon, I guess pretty -well : it is the evidence of a 
woman called Haumette, the most confidential friend 
of Joanna. Now, she is a good witness, and a good 
girl, and I like her ; for she makes a natural and affec- 
tionate report of Joanna's ordinary life. But still, 
however good she may be as a witness, Joanna is 
better ; and she, when speaking to the dauphin, calls 
herself in the Latin report Bergereta. Even Haumette 
confesses, that Joanna tended sheep in her girlhood. 
And I believe, that if Miss Haumette were taking 
cofiee alone with me this very evening (February 12, 
1847) — in which there would be no subject for scandal 
for or maiden blushes, because I am an intense philo- 
sopher, and Miss H. would be hard upon four hundred 
and fifty years old — she would admit the follo-\\dng 
comment upon her evidence to be right. A French- 
man, about forty years ago, M. Simond, in his ' Travels,* 
mentions incidently the following hideous scene as one 
steadily observed and watched by himself in chivalrous 
France, not very long before the French Revolution : 
— A peasant was ploughing ; the team that drew his 
plough was a donkey and a woman. Both were regu- 
larly harnessed : both pulled alike. This is bad 
enough ; but the Frenchman adds, that, in distribut- 
ing his lashes, the peasant was obviously desirous of 
being impartial ; or, if either of the yoke-fellows had 
a right to complain, certainly it was not the donkey. 
Now, in any country where such degradation of fe- 



96 JOAN or AEC. 

males could be tolerated by the state of manners, a 
woman of delicacy would sbrink from acknowledging, 
either for herself or her friend, that she had ever been 
addicted to any mode of labor not strictly domestic ; 
because, if once owning herself a prsedial servant, she 
would be sensible that this confession extended by pro- 
bability in the hearer's thoughl^s to the having incurred 
indignities of this horrible kind. Haumette clearly 
thinks it more dignified for Joanna to have been darn- 
ing the stockings of her horny-hoofed father. Monsieur 
D'Arc, than keeping sheep, lest she might then be 
suspected of having ever done something worse. But, 
luckily, there was no danger of that : Joanna never 
was in service ; and my opinion is, that her father 
should have mended his own stockings, since probably 
he was the party to make holes in them, as many a 
better man than D'Arc does ; meaning by that not my- 
self, because, though probably a better man than D'Arc, 
I protest against doing anything of the kind. If I 
lived even with Friday in Juan Fernandez, either Fri- 
day must do all the darning, or else it must go un- 
done. The better men that I meant were the sailors 
'n the British navy, every man of whom mends his 
own stockings. Who else is to do it? Do you sup- 
pose, reader, that the junior lords of the admiralty are 
under articles to darn for the navy ? 

The reason, meantime, for my systematic hatred of 
D'Arc is this. There was a story current in France 
before the Revolution, framed to ridicule the pauper 
aristocracy, who happened to have long pedigrees and 
short rent rolls, viz., that a head of such a house, dating 
from the Crusades, Avas overheard saying to his son, a 
Chevalier of St. Louis, ' Chevalier, as-tu donne au 



JOAN OF A.BC. 97 

cochon d manger ! ' Now, it is clearly made out by 
the surviving evidence, that D'Arc would much have 
preferred continuing to say, ' Ma fdle as-tu donne au 
cochon a manger ? ' to saying, Piieelle d' Orleans, as-tu 
sauve los Jleurs-de-lys 7 ' There is an old English copy 
of verses which argues thus : — 

* If the man that turnips cries, 
Cry not when his father dies — 
Then 'tis plain the man had rather — 
Have a turnip than his father.' 

I cannot say that the logic in these verses was ever 
entirely to my satisfaction. I do not see my way 
through it as clearly as could be wished. But I see 
my way most clearly through D'Arc ; and the result 
is — that he would greatly have preferred not mere- 
ly a turnip to his father, but saving a pound or so of 
bacon to saving the Oriflamme of France. 

It is probable (as M. Michelet suggests) that the 
title of Virgin, or Fucelle, had in itself, and apart 
from the miraculous stories about her, a secret power 
over the rude soldiery and partisan chiefs of that 
period ; for, in such a person, they saw a representa- 
tive manifestation of the Virgin Mary, who in a 
course of centuries, had grown steadily upon the 
popular heart. 

As to Joanna's supernatural detection of the dauphin 
(Charles VII.) amongst three hundred lords and 
knights, I am surprised at the credulity which could 
ever lend itself to that theatrical- juggle. Who ad- 
mires more than myself the sublime enthusiasm, the 
rapturous faith in herself, of this pure creature ? But 
I am far from admiring stage artifices, which not La 
Pucelle, but the court, must have arranged ; nor can 
9 



98 JOAN OF ABC. 

surrender myself to tte conjurer's legerdemain, such 
as may be seen every day for a shilling. Soutliey's 
'Joan of Arc' was published in 1796. Twenty years 
after, talking with Southey, I was surprised to find 
him still owning a secret bias in favor of Joan, founded 
on her detection of the dauphin. The story, for the 
benefit of the reader new to the case, was this : — La 
Pucelle w^as first made known to the dauphin, and pre- 
sented to his court, at Chinon : and here came her 
first trial. By way of testing her supernatural pre- 
tensions, she was to find out the royal personage 
amongst the whole ark of clean and unclean creatures. 
Failing in this covp d'essai, she would not simply dis- 
appoint many a beating heart in the glittering crowd 
that on different motives yearned for her success, but 
she woidd ruin herself — and, as the oracle within had 
told her, would, by ruining herself, ruin France. Our 
own sovereign lady Victoria rehearses annually a trial 
not so severe in degree, but the same in kind. She 
' pricks ' for sheriffs. Joanna pricked for a king. But 
observe the difierence : our own lady pricks for two 
men out of three ; Joanna for one man out of three 
hundred. Happy Lady of the islands and the orient! 
— she can go astray in her choice only by one half ; 
to the extent of one half she must have the satisfaction 
of being right. And yet, even with these tight limits 
to the misery of a boundless discretion, permit me, 
liege Lady, with all loyalty, to submit — that now and 
then you prick with your pin the wrong man. But 
the poor child from Domremy, shrinking under the 
gaze cf a dazzling court — not because dazzling (for ia 
visions she had seen those that were more so), but 
because some of them wore a scoffing smile on their 



JOAN OF AHC. 99 

features — how should she throw her line into so deep 
a river to angle for a king, where many a gay creature 
was sporting that masqueraded as kings in dress ? 
Nay, even more than any true king would have done : 
for, in Southey's version of the story, the dauphin 
says, by way of trying the virgin's magnetic sympathy 
with royalty, 

• On the throne, 
I the while mingling with the menial throng. 
Some courtier shall be seated. ' 

This usurper is even crowned : ' the jewelled crown 
shines on a menial's head.' But, really, that is ' un 
peu fort ; ' and the mob of spectators might raise a 
scruple whether our friend the jackdaw upon the throne, 
and the dauphin himself, were not grazing the shins 
of treason. For the dauphin could not lend more than 
belonged to him. According to the popular notion, 
he had no crown for himself; consequently none to 
lend, on any pretence whatever, until the consecrated 
Maid should take him to Rheims. This was the popu- 
lar notion in France. But, certainly, it was the 
dauphin's interest to support the popular notion, as 
he meant to use the services of Joanna. For, if he 
were king already, what was it that she could do for 
him beyond Orleans ? That is to say, what more than 
a mere military service could she render him r And, 
above all, if he were king without a coronation, and 
without the oil from the sacred ampulla, what advan- 
tage was yet open to him by celerity above his com- 
petitor the English boy ? Now was to be a race for a 
coronation : he that should win that race, carried the 
superstition of France along with him : he that should 



100 JOAN OF AEG. 

first be drawn from fhe ovens of Rheims, was under 
that superstition baked into a king. 

La Pucelle, before she could be allowed to practise 
as a w^arrior, was put through her manual and platoon 
exercise, as a pupil in divinity, at the bar of six emi- 
nent men in wigs. According to Southey (v. 393, 
Book III., in the original edition of his ' Joan of 
Arc '), she ' appalled the doctors.' It's not easy to do 
that : but they had some reason to feel bothered, as 
that surgeon would assuredly feel bothered, Avho, upon 
proceeding to dissect a subject, should find the subject 
retaliating as a dissector upon himself, especially if 
Joanna ever made the speech to them which occupies 
V. 354-391, B. III. It is a double impossibility : 1st, 
because a piracy from Tindal's ' Christianity as old as 
the Creation ' — a piracy a parte ante, and by three 
centuries ; 2dly, it is quite contrary to the evidence on 
Joanna's trial. Southey's 'Joan,' of a. b. 1796 (Cot- 
tle, Bristol), tells the doctors, amongst other secrets, 
that she never in her life attended — 1st, Mass; nor 
2d, the Sacramental table ; nor 3d, Confession. In 
the meantime, all this deistical confession of Joanna's, 
besides being suicidal for the interest of her cause, is 
opposed to the depositions upon both trials. The very 
best witness called from first to last, deposes that 
Joanna attended these rites of her church even too 
often ; was taxed with doing so ; and, by blushing, 
owned the charge as a fact, though certainly not as a 
fault. Joanna was a girl of natural piety, that saw 
God in forests, and hills, and fountains ; but did not 
the less seek him in chapels and consecrated oratories. 

This peasant girl was self-educated through her own 
natural meditativeness. If the reader turns to that 



JOAN OF AKC. 101 

divine passage in ' Paradise Regained,' which Milton 
has put into the mouth of our Saviour when first en- 
tering the wilderness, and musing upon the tendency 
of those great impulses growing within himself — 

• Oh, what a multitude of thoughts at once 
Awaken 'd in me swarm, while I consider 
What from within I feel myself, and hear 
What from without comes often to my ears, 
HI sorting with my present state compared! 
When I was yet a child, no childish play 
To me was pleasing; all my mind was set 
Serious to learn and know, and thence to do 
What might be public good; myself I thought 
Born to that end ' — 

he will have some notion of the vast reveries which 
Drooded over the heart of Joanna in early girlhood, 
when the wings were budding that should carry her 
from Orleans to Rheims ; when the golden chariot was 
dimly revealing itself, that should carry her from the 
kingdom of France Delivered to the eternal kingdom. 
It is not requifeitc, for the honor of Joanna, nor is 
there, in this place, room to pursue her brief career of 
action. That, though wonderful, forms the earthly 
part of her story : the spiritual part is the saintly pas- 
sion of her imprisonment, trial, and execution. It is 
unfortunate, therefore, for Southey's ' Joan of Arc * 
(which, however, should always be regarded as a 
juvenile effort), that, precisely when her real glory 
begins, the poem ends. But this limitation of the 
interest grew, no doubt, from the constraint inseparably 
attached to the law of epic unity. Joanna's history 
bisects into two opposite hemispheres, and both coul 
not have been presented to the eye in one poem, un 
.b38 by sacrificing all unity of theme, or else by involv- 



102 JOAN OF AUG. 

ing the earlier half, as a narrative episode, in the 
latter ; which, however, might have been done, for it 
might have been communicated to a fellow-prisoner, 
or a confessor, by Joanna herself. It is sufficient, as 
concerns this section of Joanna's life, to say that she 
fulfilled, to the height of her promises, the restoration 
of the prostrate throne. France had become a prov- 
ince of England ; and for the ruin of both, if such a 
yoke could be maintained. Dreadful pecuniary ex- 
haustion caused the English energy to droop ; anu 
that critical opening La Pucelle used with a corres- 
ponding felicity of audacity and suddenness (that were 
in themselves portentous) for introducing the wedge 
of French native resources, for rekindling the national 
pride, and for planting the dauphin once more upon 
his feet. When Joanna appeared, he had been on the 
point of giving up the struggle with the English, dis- 
tressed as they were, and of flying to the south of 
France. She taught him to blush for such abject 
counsels. She liberated Orleans, that great city, so 
decisive by its fate for the issue of the war, and then 
Oeleagured by the English with an elaborate applica- 
tion of engineering skill unprecedented in Europe. 
Entering the city after sunset, on the 29th of April, 
she sang mass on Sunday, May 8, for the entire dis- 
Appearance of the besieging force. On the 29 th of 
June, she fought and gained over the English the 
decisive battle of Patay ; on the 9th of July, she took 
Troyes by a coup-de-main from a mixed garrison of 
English and Burgundians ; on the 15th of that month, 
she carried the dauphin into E-heims ; on Sunday 
the 17th, she crowned him ; and there she rested 
from her labor of triumph. All that was to be do»e, 



li 



JOAN OF ARC. 103 

she had no.v accomplislied : what remained was — to 
suffer. 

All this forward movement was her own : excepting 
one man, the whole council was against her. Her 
enemies were all that drew power from earth. Her 
supporters were her own strong enthusiasm, and the 
headlong contagion by which she carried this sublime 
frenzy into the hearts of women, of soldiers, and of all 
who lived by labor. Henceforwards she was thwarted ; 
and the worst error that she committed was, to- lend 
the sanction of her presence to counsels which she had 
ceased to approve. But she had noAv accomplished 
the capital objects which her own visions had dictated. 
These involved all the rest. Errors were now less 
important ; and doubtless it had now become more 
difficult for herself to pronounce authentically what 
were errors. The noble girl had achieved, as by a 
rapture of motion, the capital end of clearing out a 
free space around her sovereign, giving him the power 
to move his arms with effect ; and, secondly, the inap- 
preciable end of winning for that sovereign what seem- 
ed to all France the heavenly ratification of his rights, 
by crowning him with the ancient solemnities. She had 
made it impossible for the English now to step before 
her. They were caught in an irretrievable blunder, 
owing partly to discord amongst the \incles of Henry 
VI., partly to a want of funds, but partly to the very 
impossibility which they believed to press with tenfold 
force upon any French attempt to forestall theirs. 
Thej' laughed at such a thought ; and whilst they 
laughed, she did it. Henceforth the single redress 
for the English of this capital oversight, but which 
never couLi have redressed it effectually, was, to vitiate 



104 JOAN OF ABC. 

and taint the coronation of Charles VII. as the work 
of a witch. That policy, and not malice (as M. 
Michelet is so happy to believe), was the moving 
principle in the subsequent prosecution of Joanna. 
Unless they unhinged the force of the first coronation 
in the popular mind, by associating it with power given 
from hell, they felt that the sceptre of the invader 
was broken. 

But she, the child that, at nineteen, had wrought 
wonders so great for France, was she not elated? Did 
she not lose, as men so often have lost, all sobriety of 
mind when standing upon the pinnacle of success so 
giddy ? Let her enemies declare. During the pro- 
gress of her movement, and in the centre of ferocious 
struggles, she had manifested the temper of her feel- 
ings, by the pity which she had everywhere expressed 
for the suffering enemy. She forwarded to the English 
leaders a touching invitation to unite with the French, 
as brothers, in a common crusade against infidels, thus 
opening the road for a soldierly retreat. She inter- 
posed to protect the captive or the wounded — she 
mourned over the excesses of her countrymen — she 
threw herself ofi" her horse to kneel by the dying 
English soldier, and to comfort him with such minis- 
trations, physical or spiritual, as his situation allowed. 
* Nolebat,' says the evidence, ' uti ense suo, aut quem- 
quam interficere.' She sheltered the English, that 
invoked her aid, in her own quarters. She wept as 
she beheld, stretched on the field of battle, so many 
brave enemies that had died without confession. And, 
as regarded herself, her elation expressed itself thus : 
. — On the day when she had finished her work, she 
wept ; for she knew that, when her triumphal task was 



JOAN OF AKC. 106 

done, her end must be approaching. Her aspirations 
pointed only to a place, which seemed to her more 
than usually full of natural piety, as one in which it 
would give her pleasure to die. And she uttered, 
between smiles and tears, as a wish that inexpressibly 
fascinated her heart, and yet was half-fantastic, a 
broken prayer, that God would return her to the soli- 
tudes from which he had drawn her, and suflfer her to 
become a shepherdess once more. It was a natural 
prayer, because nature has laid a necessity upon every 
human heart to seek for rest, and to shrink from 
torment. Yet, again, it was a half-fantastic prayer, 
because, from childhood upwards, visions that she had 
no power to mistrust, and the voices which sounded in 
her ear for ever, had long since persuaded her mind, 
that for her no such prayer could be granted. Too 
well she felt that her mission must be worked out to 
the end, and that the end was now at hand. All 
went wrong from this time. She herself had created 
the funds out of which the French restoration should 
grow ; but she was not suffered to Avitness their de- 
velopment, or their prosperous application. More 
than one military plan was entered upon which she 
did not approve. But she still continued to expose 
her person as before. Severe wounds had not taught 
her caution. And at length, in a sortie from Cora- 
peigne (whether through treacherous collusion on the 
part of her own friends is doubtful to this day), she 
was made prisoner by the Burgundians, and finally 
surrendered to the English. 

Now came her trial. This trial, movin"- of course 
under English influence, was conducted in ''hief by the 
Bishop of Beauvais. He was a Frenchir* in , °old to 



106 JOAN OF AKC. 

English interests, and hoping, by favor of the Eng^ 
lish leaders, to reach the highest preferment. Bishop 
that art, Archhishop that shalt be, Cardinal that mayest 
be, were the words that sounded continually in his ear ; 
and doubtless, a whisper of visions still higher, of a 
triple crown, and feet upon the necks of kings, some- 
times stole into his heart. M. Michelet is anxious to 
keep us in mind that this bishop was but an agent of 
the English. True. But it does not better the case 
for his countryman — that, being an accomplice in the 
crime, making himself the leader in the persecution 
against the helpless girl, he was willing to be all this 
in the spirit, and with the conscious vileness of a cat's- 
paw. Never from the foundations of the earth was 
there such a trial as this, if it were laid open in all its 
beauty of defence, and all its hellishness of attack. Oh, 
child of France ! shepherdess, peasant girl ! trodden 
under foot by all around thee, how I honor thy flash- 
ing intellect, quick as God's lightning, and true as 
God's lightning to its mark, that ran before France 
and laggard Europe by many a century, confounding 
the malice of the ensnarer, and making dumb the 
oracles of falsehood ! Is it not scandalous, is it 
not humiliating to civilization, that, even at this 
day, France exhibits the horrid spectacle of judges 
examining the prisoner against himself; seducing 
him, by fraud, into treacherous conclusions against 
his own head ; using the terrors of their power for 
extorting confessions from the frailty of hope; nay 
(which is worse), using the blandishments of conde- 
scension and snaky kindness for thawing into compli- 
ances of gratitude those whom they had faileu to 
freeze into terror ? Wicked judges ! Barbarian juris* 



JOAN OF AKC. 107 

prudence ! that, sitting in your own conceit on tlie 
summits of social wisdom, have yet failed to learn the 
first principles of criminal justice ; sit ye humbly and 
with docility at the feet of this girl from Domremy, 
that tore your wehs of cruelty into shreds and dust. 
' "Would you examine me as a witness against myself? ' 
was the question by which many times she defied their 
arts. Continually she showed that their interrogations 
were irrelevant to any business before the couit, or 
that entered into the ridiculous charges against her. 
General questions were proposed to her on points of 
casuistical divinity ; two-edged questions, which not 
one of themselves could have answered without, on 
the one side, landing himself in heresy (as then inter- 
preted), or, on the other, in some presumptuous 
expression of self-esteem. Next came a wretched 
Dominican, that pressed her with an objection, which, 
if applied to the Bible would tax every one of its 
miracles with unsoundness. The monk had the excuse 
of never having read the Bible. M. Michelet has no 
such excuse ; and it makes one blush for him, as a 
philosopher, to find him describing such an argument 
as ' weighty,' whereas it is but a varied expression of 
rude Mahometan metaphysics. Her answer to this, if 
there were room to place the whole in a clear light, 
was as shattering as it was rapid. Another thought 
to entrap her by asking what language the angelic 
visitors of her solitude had talked ; as though heavenly 
coimsels could want polyglot interpreters for every 
word, or that God needed language at all in whisper- 
ing thoughts to a human heart. Then came a worse 
devil, who asked her whether the archangel Michael had 
appeared naked. Not comprehending the vUe iusinua- 



108 JOAN OF ARC. 

tion, Joanna, whose poverty suggested to her simplicity 
that it might be the costliness of suitable robes which 
caused the demur, asked them if they fancied God, 
who clothed the flowers of the valleys, unable to find 
raiment for his servants. The answer of Joanna 
moves a smile of tenderness, but the disappointment 
of her judges makes one laugh exultingly. Others 
succeeded by troops, who upbraided her with leaving 
her father ; as if that greater Father, whom she believed 
herself to have been serving, did not retain the power 
of dispensing with his own rules, or had not said, 
that, for a less cause than martyrdom, man and woman 
"hould leave both father and mother. 

On Easter Sunday, when the trial had been long 
proceeding, the poor girl fell so ill as to cause a belief 
that she had been poisoned. It was not poison. No- 
body had any interest in hastening a death so certain. 
M. Michelet, whose sympathies with all feelings are so 
quick, that one would gladly see them always as justly 
directed, reads the case most truly. Joanna had a 
twofold malady. She was visited by a paroxysm of 
the complaint called home-sickness ; the cruel nature 
of her imprisonment, and its length, could not but 
point her solitary thoughts, in darkness and in chains 
(for chained she was), to Domremy, And the season, 
which was the most heavenly period of the spring, 
added stings to this yearning. That was one of her 
maladies — nostalgia, as medicine calls it ; the other 
was weariness and exhaustion from daily combats with 
malice. She saw that everybody hated her, and 
thirsted for her blood ; nay, many kind-hearted crea- 
tures that would have pitied her profoundly, as regard- 
ed all political charges, had their natural feelings 



i 



JOAN OF ARC. 109 

wavped by tlie belief tbat she bad dealings wilb fiend- 
isb powers. Sbe knew sbe was to die ; tbat was not 
tbe misery : tbe misery was, tbat tbis consummation 
could not be "eacbcd witbout so mucb intermediate 
strife, as if s^e were contending for some cbance 
(wbere cbance was none) of bappiness, or were dream- 
ing for a moment of escaping tbe inevitable. Wby, 
tben, did sbe contend ? Knowing tbat sbe would reap 
notbing from answering bcr persecutors, wby did she 
not retii'e by silence from tbe superfluous contest ? It 
was because ber quick and eager loyalty to trutb would 
not suftcr ber to see it darkened by frauds, wbicb she 
could expose, but otbers, even of candid listeners, 
perbaps could not ; it was tbrougb .tbat imperisbable 
grandeur of soul, wbicb taugbt ber to submit meekly 
and witbout a struggle to ber punisbment, but taugbt 
ber not to submit — no, not for a moment — to calum- 
ny as to facts, or to misconstruction as to motives. 
Besides, tbere were secretaries all around tbe court 
taking down ber words. Tbat was meant for no good 
to her. But tbe end does not always correspond to 
tbe meaning. And Joanna migbt say to berself — tbeso 
words tbat will be used against me to-morrow and tbe 
next day, perbaps in some nobler generation may rise 
again for my justification. Yes, Joanna, tbey are rising 
even now in Paris, and for more tban justification. 

Woman, sister — tbere are some tilings wbicb you 
do not execute as well as your brotber, man; no, nor 
ever will. Pardon me, if I doubt wbetber you will 
ever produce a great poet from your cboirs, or a Mo- 
zart, or a Pbidias, or a Micbael Angelo, or a great 
pbilosopber, or a great scbolar. By wbicb last is 
meant — not one wbo depends simply on an infinite 



1 10 JOAN OF AEC. 

memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power 
of combination ; bringing together from the fom* winds, 
like the angel of the resurrection, what else were dust 
from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing 
life. If you can create yourselves into any of these 
great creators, why have you not ? 

Yet, sister woman, though I cannot consent to find 
a Mozart or a Michael Angelo in your sex, cheerfully, 
and with the love that burns in depths of admiration, 
I acknowledge that you can do one thing as well aa 
the best of us men — a greater thing than even Milton 
is known to have done, or Michael Angelo — you can 
die grandly, and as goddesses would die, were god- 
desses mortal. If any distant worlds (which 7nay be 
the case) are so far ahead of us Tellurians in optica] 
resources, as to see distinctly through their telescopes 
all that we do on earth, what is the grandest sight to 
which we ever treat them ? St. Peter's at Rome, do 
you fancy, on Easter Sunday, or Luxor, or perhaps the 
Himalayas ? Oh, no ! my friend : suggest something 
better ; these are baubles to them ; they see in other | 
worlds, in their own, far better toys of the same kind, i 
These, take my word for it, are nothing. Do you give 
it up ? The finest thing, then, we have to show them, 
is a scafi'old on the morning of execution. I assure 
you there is a strong muster in those far telescopic 
worlds, on any such morning, of those who happen to 
find themselves occupying the right hemisphere for a 
peep at us. How, then, if it be announced in some 
Buch telescopic world by those who make a livelihood 
of catching glimpses at our newspapers, whose Ian 
guage they have long since deciphered, that the poor 
victim in the morning's sacrifice is a woman ? How, 



JOAN OP ABC. Ill 

if it bo published in that distant woild, that the suf- 
ferer wears upon her head, in the eyes of many, the 
garlands of martyrdom ? How, if it should be some 
Marie Antoinette, the widoAved queen, coming forward 
on the scaffold, and presenting to the morning air her 
head turned gray by sorrow, daughter of Caesars kneel- 
ing down humbly to kiss the guillotine, as one that 
worships death ? How, if it were the noble Charlotte 
Corday, that in the bloom of youth, that with the 
loveliest of persons, that with homage waiting upon 
her smiles Avherever she turned her face to scatter 
them — homage that followed those smiles as surely aa 
the carols of birds, after showers in spring, follow the 
re-appearing sun and the racing of sunbeams over the 
bills — yet thought all these things cheaper than the 
dust upon her sandals, in comparison of deliverance 
from hell for her dear suffering France ! Ah ! these 
were spectacles indeed for those sympathizing people 
in distant worlds ; and some, perhaps would suffer a 
sort of martyrdom themselves, because they could not 
testify their wrath, could not bear witness to the 
strength of love and to the fury of hatred that burned 
within them at such scenes; could not gather into 
golden urns some of that glorious dust which rested 
"n the catacombs of earth. 

On the Wednesday after Trinity Sunday in 1431, 
being then about nineteen years of age, the Maid of 
Ai'c luiderwent hen martyrdom. She was conducted 
before mid-day, guarded by eight hundred spearmen, 
to a platform of prodigious height, constructed of 
wooden billets supported by occasional walls of lath 
and plaster, and traversed by hollow spaces in every 
direction for the creation of air-currents. The pile 



112 JOAN or ARC. 

' struck terror,' says M. Michelet, ' by its height ;' and, 
as usual, the English purpose in this is viewed as one 
of pure malignity. But there are two ways of explain- 
ing all that. It is probable that the purpose was 
merciful. On the circumstances of the execution I 
shall not linger. Yet, to mark the almost fatal felicity 
of M. Michelet in finding out whatever may injure the 
English name, at a moment when every reader will be 
interested in Joanna's personal appearance, it is really 
edifying to notice the ingenuity by which he draws 
into light from a dark corner a very unjust account of 
it, and neglects, though lying upon the high road, a 
very pleasing one. Both are from English pens. 
Grafton, a chronicler but little read, being a stifi"- 
necked John Bull, thought fit to say, that no Avonder 
Joanna should be a vii'gin, since her ' foule face ' was 
a satisfactory solution of that particular merit. Hol- 
inshead, on the other hand, a chi-onicler somewhat 
later, every way more important, and at one time 
universally read, has given a very pleasing testimony 
to the interesting character of Joanna's person and 
engaging manners. Neither of these men lived till 
the following century, so that personally this evidence 
is none at all. Grafton sullenly and carelessly be- 
lieved as he wished to believe ; Holinshead took pains 
to inquire, and reports undoubtedly the general im- 
pression of France. But I cite the case as illustrating 
M. Michele.*;'s candor.^ 

The circumstantial incidents of the execution, unless 
with more space than I can now command, I should be 
unwilling to relate. I should fear to injure, by im- 
perfect report, a martyrdom which to myself appears so 
unspeakably grand. Yet for a purpose, pointing not 



JOAN OF ABC. 113 

at Joanna, but at M. Michclet — viz., to convince him 
that an Englishman is capable of thinking more highly 
of La Fucelle than even her admiring countryman, I 
shall, in parting, allude to one or two traits in Joanna's 
demeanor on the scaffold, and to one or two in that of 
the bystanders, which authorize me in questioning an 
opinion of his upon this martyr's firmness. The reader 
ought to be reminded that Joanna D'Arc was subjected 
to an unusually unfair trial of opinion. Any of the 
elder Christian martyrs had not much to fear of per- 
sonal rancor. The martyr was chiefly regarded as the 
enemy of Caesar ; at times, also, where any knowledge 
of the Christian faith and morals existed, with the 
enmity that arises spontaneously in the w^orldly against 
the spiritual. But the martj-r, though disloyal, was 
not supposed to be, therefore, anti-national ; and still 
less was individually hateful. What was hated (if 
anything) belonged to his class, not to himself sepa- 
rately. Now, Joanna, if hated at all, was hated per- 
sonally, and in Rouen on national grounds. Hence 
there would be a certainty of calumny arising against 
her, such as would not aff"ect martyrs in general. That 
being the case, it would follow of necessity that some 
people would impute to her a willingness to recant. 
No innocence could escape that. Now, had she really 
testified this willingness on the scaff"old, it would have 
argued nothing at all but the weakness of a genial 
nature shrinking from the instant approach of torment. 
And those will often pity that weakness most, who, in 
their own persons, would yield to it least. Meantime, 
there never was a calumny uttered that drew less sup- 
port from the recorded circumstances. It rests upon 
no positive testimony, and it has a weight of contra- 
10 



114 JOAN or ARC. 

dieting testimony to stem. And yet, strange to 
say, M. Miclielet, wlio at times seems to admire the 
Maid of Arc as much as I do, is the one sole writer 
amongst her friends who lends some countenance to 
this odious slander. His words are, that, if she did 
not utter this word recant with her lips, she uttered it 
in her heart. ' Whether she said the word is uncer- 
tain; but I affirm that she thought it.' 

Now, I affirm that she did not ; not in any sense of 
the word ' thought ' applicable to the case. Here is 
France calumniating La Pucelle : here is England de- 
fending her. M. Michelet can only mean that, on d 
priori principles, every woman must be liable to such 
a weakness : that Joanna was a woman ; ergo, that she 
was liable to such a weakness. That is, he only sup- 
poses her to have uttered the word by an argument 
which presumes it impossible for anybody to have done 
otherwise. I, on the contrary, throw the onus of the 
argument not on presumable tendencies of nature, but 
on the known facts of that morning's execution, as re- 
corded by multitudes. What else, I demand, than 
mere weight of metal, absolute nobility of deportment, 
broke the vast line of battle then arrayed against her ? 
What else but her meek, saintly demeanor won from 
the enemies, that till now had believed her a witch, 
tears of rapturous admiration ? ' Ten thousand men,' 
says M. Michelet himself, ' ten thousand men wept ; ' 
and of these ten thousand the majority were political 
enemies knitted together by cords of superstition. 
What else was it but her constancy, united with her 
angelic gentleness, that drove the fanatic English sol- 
dier — who had sworn to throw a faggot on her scaf- 
fold, as his tribute of abhorrence, that did so, that ful- 



JOAN OF ARC. 116 

filled his vow — suddenly to turn away a penitent for 
life, saying everywhere that he had seen a dove rising 
upon wings to heaven from the ashes where she had 
stood ? AVhat else drove the executioner to kneel at 
every shrine for pardon to his share in the tragedy ! 
And if all this were insufficient, then I cite the closing 
act of her life, as valid on her behalf, were all other 
testimonies against her. The executioner had been 
directed to apply his torch from below. He did so. 
The fiery smoke rose upwards in billowing volumes. A 
Dominican monk was then standing almost at her side. 
Wrapped up in his sublime office, he saw not the dan- 
ger, but still persisted in his prayers. Even then, whea 
the last enemy was racing up the fiery stairs to seize 
her, even at that moment did this noblest of girls think 
only for him, the one friend that would not forsake her, 
and not for herself; bidding him with her last breath 
to care for his own preservation, but to leave her to God. 
That girl, whose latest breath ascended in this sublime 
expression of self-oblivion, did not utter the word re- 
cant either with her lips or in her heart. No ; she did 
not, though one should rise from the dead to swear it. 

Bishop of Beauvais ! thy victim died in fire upon a 
scaffold — thou upon a down bed. But for the de- 
parting minutes of life, both are oftentimes alike. At 
the farewell crisis, when the gates of death are open- 
ing, and flesh is resting from its struggles, oftentimes 
the tortured and torturer have the same truce from 
carnal torment ; both sink together into sleep ; to- 
gether both, sometimes, kindle into dreams. When 
the mortal mists were gathering fast upon you two, 
bishop and shepherd girl — when the pavilions of life 



116 JOAN OF ARC. 

were closing up tlieir shadowy curtains about you — 
let us try, tlirougli the gigantic glooms, to decipher the 
flying features of your separate visions. 

The shepherd girl that had delivered France — she, 
from her dungeon, she, from her baiting at the stake, 
she, from her duel with fire, as she entered her last 
dream — saw Domremy, saw the fountain of Domremy, 
saAV the pomp of forests in which her childhood had 
wandered. That Easter festival, which man had de- 
nied to her languishing heart — that resurrection of 
spring-time, which the darkness of dungeons had in- 
tercepted from her, hungering after the glorious liberty 
of forests — were by God given back into her hands, 
as jewels that had been stolen from her by robbers. 
With those, perhaps (for the minutes of dreams can 
stretch into ages), was given back to her by God the 
bliss of childhood. By special privilege, for lier might 
be created, in this farewell dream, a second childhood, 
innocent as the first ; but not, like that, sad with the 
gloom of a fearful mission in the rear. The mission 
had now been fulfilled. The storm was weathered, the 
skirts even of that mighty storm were drawing off. 
The blood that she was to reckon for. had been ex- 
acted ; the tears that she was to shed in secret had 
been paid to the last. The hatred to herself in all 
oyes had been faced steadily, had been suffered, had 
been survived. And in her last fight upon the scaffold 
she had triumphed gloriously ; victoriously she had 
tasted the stings of death. For all, except this com- 
fort from her farewell dream, she had died — died, 
amids ; ;he tears of ten thousand enemies — died, 
amidst the drums and trumpets of armies — died, 
amidst peals redoubling upon peals, volleys upon vol- 
leys, from the saluting clarions of martyrs. 



JOAN OF AKC. 117 

Bishop of Beauvais ! because . the guilt-burdened 
man is in dreams haunted and waylaid by the most 
frightful of his crimes, and because upon that fluctuat- 
ing mirror — rising (like the mocking mirrors of mirage 
in Arabian deserts) from the fens of death — most of 
all are reflected the sweet countenances which the man 
has laid in ruins ; therefore I know, bishop, that you 
also, entering your final dream, saw Domremy. That 
fountain, of which the witnesses spoke so much, showed 
itself to your eyes in pure morning dews : but neither 
dews, nor the holy dawn, could cleanse away the bright 
spots of innocent blood upon its surface. By the foun- 
tain, bishop, you saw a woman seated, that hid her 
face. But as you draw near, the woman raises her 
wasted features. Would Domremy know them agaia 
for the features of her child ? " Ah, but you know them, 
bishop,well ! Oh, mercy ! what a groan was that which 
the servants, waiting outside the bishop's dream at his 
bedside, heard from his laboring heart, as at this mo- 
ment he turned away from the fountain and the woman, 
seeking rest in the forests afar off". Yet not so to 
escape the woman, Avhom once again he must behold be- 
fore he dies. In the forests to which he prays for pity, 
will he find a respite ? "What a tumult, what a gath- 
ering of feet is there ! In glades, where only ^viH 
deer should run, armies and nations are assembling ; 
towering in the fluctuating crowd are phantoms that 
belong to departed hours. There is the great English 
Prince, Regent of France. There is my Lord of Win- 
chester, the princely cardinal, that died and made no 
sign. There is the Bishop of Beauvais, clinging to the 
shelter of thickets. What building is that which hands 
80 rapid are raising ? Is it a martyr's scafibld ? Will 



118 JOAN OF ABC. 

they burn tlie child. of Domremy a second time ? No : 
it is a tribunal that rises to the clouds ; and two nations 
stand around it, waiting for a trial. Shall my Lord 
of Beauvais sit again upon the judgment-seat, and 
again number the hours for the innocent ? Ah ! no : 
he is the prisoner at the bar. Already all is waiting : 
the mighty audience is gathered, the Court is hurrying 
to their seats, the witnesses are arrayed, the trumpets 
are sounding, the judge is taking his place. Oh ! but 
this is sudden. My lord, have you no counsel ? ' Coun- 
sel I have none : in heaven above, or on earth be- 
neath, counsellor there is none now that would take a 
brief from me : all are silent.' Is it, indeed, come to 
this ? Alas the time is short, the tumult is wondrous, 
the crowd stretches away into infinity, but yet I will 
search in it for somebody to take your brief : I know 
of somebody that will be your counsel. Who is this 
that Cometh from Domremy ? Who is she in bloody 
coronation robes from Rheims ? Who is she that 
cometh with blackened flesh from walking the fur- 
naces of Rouen ? This is she, the shepherd girl, coun- 
sellor that had none for herself, whom I choose, bishop, 
for yours. She it is, I engage, that shall take my 
lord's brief. She it is, bishop, that would plead for 
you : yes, bishop, she — when heaven and earth ara 
silent. 



f 



NOTES. 

NoTB 1. Page 81. 
• Arc : ' — Modern France, that should know a great deal bet- 
ter than myself, insists that the name is not D'Arc — i. c, of 
Arc — but Dare. Now it happens sometimes, that if a person, 
whose position guarantees his access to the best information, will 
content himself with gloomy dogmatism, striking the table with 
his fist, and saying in a terrific voice, ' It is so; and there's an 
end of it,' one bows deferentially, and submits. But if, unhap- 
pily for himself, won by this docility, he relents too amiably into 
reasons and arguments, probably one raises an insurrection 
against him that may never be crushed ; for in the fields of logio 
one can skii-mish, perhaps, as well as he. Had he confined him- 
Bclf to dogmatism, he would have entrenched his position in 
darkness, and have hidden his own vulnerable points. But, 
coming down to base reasons, he lets in light, and one sees where 
to plant the blows. Now, the worshipful reason of modern France 
for disturbing the old received spelling, is — that Jean Hordal, 
a descendant of Z,a Pucelle's brother, spelled the name Darc^ in 
1G12. But what of that ? It is notorious that what small mat- 
ter of spelling Providence had thought fit to disburse amongst 
man in the seventeenth century, was all monopolized by printers; 
now, M. Hordal was not a printer. 

Note 2. Page 82. 
'Those that share thy blood : ' — a collateral relative of Joannu's 
was subsequently ennobled by the title of Bu Lys. 

Note 3. Page 85. 
•Only now forthcoming:' — In 1847 began the publicatiou 
(from official records) of Joanna's trial. It was interrupted, I 
fear, by the convulsions of 1848; and whether even yet finished, 
I do not know. 

[119] 



120 NOTES. 



Note 4. Page 87. 
' Jean ; ' — M. Michelet asserts, that there was a mystical 
meaning at that era in calling a child Jean ; it implied a secret 
commendation of a child, if not a dedication, to St. .John the 
evangelist, the beloved disciple, the apostle of love and mysterious 
Tisions. But, really, as the name was so exceedingly common, 
few people will detect a mystery in calling a boy by the name of 
Jack, though it does seem mysterious to call a girl Jack. It may 
be less so in France, where a beautiful practice has always pre- 
vailed of giving to a boy his mother's name — preceded and 
strengthened by a male name, as Charles Anne, Victor Vic 
toire. In cases where a mother's memory has been iinusually 
dear to a son, this vocal memento of her, locked into the circle 
of his own name, gives to it the tenderness of a testamentary 
relique, or a funeral ring. I presume, therefore, that La Pucelle 
must have borne the baptismal names of Jeanne Jean ; the latter 
with no reference, perhaps, to so sublime a person as St. John, 
but simply to some relative. 

Note 5. Page 88. 
And reminding one of that inscription, so justly admired by 
Paul Richter, which a Russian Czarina placed on a guide-post 
near Moscow — This is the road that leads to Constantinople. 

Note 6. Page 112. 

Amongst the many ebullitions of M. Michelet's fury against us 
poor English, are four which will be likely to amuse the reader ; 
and they are the more conspicuous in collision with the justice 
which he sometimes does us, and the very indignant admiration 
which, under some aspects, he grants to us. 

1. Our English literature he admires with some gnashing of 
teeth. He pronounces it ' fine and sombre,' but, I lament to add, 
* sceptical. Judaic, Satanic — in a word, Anti-Christian.' That 
Lord Byron should figure as a member of this diabolical corpora- 
tion, will not surprise men. It will surprise them to hear that 
Milton is one of its Satanic leaders. Many are the generous and 
eloquent Frenchmen, besides Chateaubriand, who have, in the 
course of the last thirty years, nobly suspended their own bum« 



1 



NOTES. 121 

ing nationality, in order to render a more rapturous homage at 
the feet of Milton; and some of them have raised Milton almost 
to a level with angelic natures. Not one of them has thought of 
looking for him below the earth. As to Shakspeare, M. Michelet 
detects in him a most extraordinary mai-e's nest. It is this : he 
does * not recollect to have seen the name of God ' in any part of 
his works. On reading such words, it is natural to rub one's 
eyes, and suspect that all one has ever seen in this world may 
have been a pure ocular delusion. In particular, I begin myself 
to suspect, that the word ' la gloire ' never occurs in any Pari- 
eian journal. ' The great English nation,' says M. Michelet, ' has 
one immense profound vice,' to wit, ' pride.' Why, really that 
may be true; but we have a neighbor not absolutely cleir of an 
* immense profound vice,' as like ours in color and shape as cherry 
to cherry. In short, M. Michelet thinks us, by fits and starts, 
admirable, only that we are detestable ; and he would adore some 
of our authors, were it not that so intensely he could have wished 
to kick them. 

2. M. Michelet thinks to lodge an arrow in our sides by a very 
odd remark upon Thomas a Kempis : which is, that a man of any 
conceivable European blood — a Finlander, suppose, or a Zan- 
tiote — might have written Tom ; only not an Englishman. 
Whether an Englishman could have forged Tom, must remain a 
matter of doubt, unless the thing had been tried long ago. That 
problem was intercepted for ever by Tom's perverseness in choos- 
ing to manufacture himself. Yet, since nobody is better aware 
than M. Michelet that this very point of Kempis having manu- 
factured Kempis is furiously and hopelessly litigated, three or 
four nations claiming to have forged his work for him, the 
shocking old doubt will raise its snaky head once more — whether 
this forger, who rests in so much darkness, might not, after all, 
be of English blood. Tom, it may be feared, is known to modern 
English literature chiefly by an irreverent mention of his name 
in a line of Peter Pindar's (Dr. Wolcot) fifty years back, where 
he is described aa 

' Kempis Tom, 
Who clearly shows the way to Kingdom Come.' 
Few in these days can have read him, unless in the Methodist 
Teraion of John Wesley. Amongst those few, however, happens 
11 



122 NOTES. 

to be myself; -wliicli arose from the accident of ha-ving, Trhen a 
boy of eleven, received a copy of the ' De Imitatione Christi,' aa 
a bequest from a relation, who died very young; from which 
cause, and from the external prettiness of the book, being a 
Glasgow reprint, by the celebrated Foulis, and gayly bound, I 
was induced to look into it; and finally read it many times over, 
partly out of some sympathy which, even in those days, I had 
with its simplicity and devotional fervor; but much more from 
the savage delight I found in laughing at Tom's Latinity. That^ 
I freely grant to M. Michelet, is inimitable. Yet, after all, it is 
not certain whether the original was Latin. But, however that 
may have been, if it is possible that M. Michelet * can be accu- 
rate in saying that there are no less than sixty French versions 
(not editions, observe, but separate versions) existmg of the ' De 
Imitatione,' how prodigious must have been the adaptation of the 
book to the religious heart of the fifteenth century ! Excepting 
the Bible, but excepting that only, in Protestant lands, no book 
known to man has had the same distinction. It is the most 
marvellous bibliographical fact on record. 

3. Our English girls, it seems, are as faulty in one way as we 
English males in another. None of us men could have written 
the Opera Omnia of Mr. ci Kempis; neither could any of our 
girls have assumed male attire like La Pucelle. But why? 
Because, says Michelet, English girls and German think so much 

* ' If M. Michelet can be accurate : ' — However, on consider- 
ation, this statement does not depend on Michelet. The bibli- 
ographer Barbier has absolutely specified sixty in a separate 
dissertation, soixante traductions, amongst those even that have 
not escaped the search. The Italian translations are said to be 1 
thirty. As to mere editions, not counting the early MSS. for f 
half a century before printing was introduced, those in Latia 
amount to two thousand, and those in French to one thousand. 
Meantime, it is very clear to me that this astonishing popularityj 
so entirely unparalleled in hterature, could not have existed ex- 
cept in Roman Catholic times, nor subsequently have lingered in 
any Protestant land. It was the denial of Scripture fountains to 
thii-sty lands which made this slender rill of Scripture truth so 
passionately welcome. 



NOTES. 123 

of an indecorum. Well, that is a good fault, generally speaking. 
But M. Michelet ought to have remembered a fact in the martyr- 
ologics which justifies both parties — the French heroine for 
doing, and the general choir of English girls for not doing. A 
female saint, specially renowned in France, had, for a reason as 
weighty as Joanna's — viz., expressly to shield her modesty 
amongst men — worn a male military harness. That reason and 
that example authorized La Pucelle ; but our English girls, as 
a body, have seldom any such reason, and certainly no such 
Baintly example, to plead. This excuses them. Yet, still, if it is 
indispensable to the national character that our young women 
should now and then trespass over the fi'ontier of decorum, it then 
becomes a patriotic duty in me to assure M. Michelet that we have 
such ardent females amongst us, and in a long series ; some 
detected in naval hospitals, when too sick to remember their 
disguise; some on fields of battle; multitudes never detected at 
all; some only suspected; and others discharged without noise 
by war oflBces and other absurd people. In our navy, both royal 
and commercial, and generally from deep remembrances of 
Blighted love, women have sometimes served in disguise for many 
years, taking contentedly their daily allowance of burgoo, biscuit, 
or cannon-balls — anything, in short, digestible or indigestible, 
that it might please Providence to send. One thing, at least, is 
to their credit : never any of these poor masks, with their deep 
silent remembrances, have been detected through murmuring, or 
what is nautically understood by ' skulking. ' So, for once, M. 
Michelet has an erratum to enter upon the fly-leaf of his book in 
presentation copies. 

4. But the last of these ebullitions is the most lively. We 
English, at Orleans, and after Orleans (which is not quite so ex- 
traordinary, if all were told), fled before the Maid of Arc. Yes, 
says M. Michelet, you did: deny it, if you can. Deny it, mon 
chcrl I don't mean to deny it. Running away, in many cases, 
is a thing so excellent, that no philosopher would, at times, con- 
descend to adopt any other step. All of us nations in Europe, 
witliout one exception, have shown our philosophy in that way at 
times. Even people, ' qui ne se rendent pas,' have deigned both 
to run and to shout, ' Sauve qui peiU! ' at odd times of sunset ; 
though, for my part, I have no pleasure in recalling unpleasant 



124 NOTES. 

remembrances to brave men ; and yet, really, being so philo> 
Sophie, they ought not to be unpleasant. But the amusing fea- 
ture in M. Michelet's reproach is the way in which he improves 
and varies against us the charge of running, as if he were singing 
a catch. Listen to him. They ' showed their backs,'' did these 
English. (Hip, hip, hurrah ! three times three !) ' Behind 
good walls, they let themselves be taken.' (Hip, hip ! nine times 
nine !) They ' ran as fast as their legs could carry ihem.' 
(Hurrah ! twenty-seven times twenty-seven !) They ' ran before 
a girl ; ' they did. (Hurrah ! eighty-one times eighty-one !) 
This reminds one of criminal indictments on the old model in 
English courts, where (for fear the prisoner should escape) the 
crown lawyer varied the charge perhaps through forty counts. 
The law laid its guns so as to rake the accused at every possible 
angle. Whilst the indictment was reading, he seemed a monster 
of crime in his own eyes; and yet, after all, the poor fellow had 
but committed one oflFence, and not always that. N. B. — . Not 
having the French original at hand, I make my quotations from 
a friend's copy of Mr. Walter Kelly's translation, which seema 
to me faithful, spirited, and idiomatically English — liable, in 
&ct, only to the single reproach rf occasional provincialismB. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

SECTION THE FIRST.— THE GLORY OF MOTION. 

Some twenty or more years before I matriculated at 
Oxford, Mr. Palmer, at that time M. P. for Bath, had 
accomplished two things, very hard to do on our little 
planet, the Earth, however cheap they may be held by 
eccentric people in comets — he had invented mail- 
coaches, and he had married the daughter ^ of a duke. 
He was, therefore, just twice as great a man as Galileo, 
who did certainly invent (or which is the same thing,^ 
discover) the satellites of Jupiter, those very next 
things extant to mail-coaches in the two capital pre- 
tensions of speed and keeping time, but, on the other 
hand, who did not marry the daughter of a duke. 

These mail-coaches, as organzied by Mr. Palmer, 
are entitled to a circumstantial notice from myself, 
having had so large a share in developing the anarchies 
of my subsequent dreams ; an agency Avhich they 
accomplished, 1st, through velocity, at that time un- 
precedented — for they first revealed the glory of mo- 
tion ; 2dly, through grand effects for the eye between 
lamp-light and the darkness upon solitary roads ; 
3dly, through animal beauty and power so often dis- 
played in the class of horses selected for this mail 
service ; 4thly, through the conscious presence of a 
central intellect, that, in the midst oi cast di^itanres^ 
— of storms, of darkness, cf dingoi --overr? Vd all 

[125] 



126 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

obstacles into one steady co-operation to a national 
result. For my own feeling, this post-office service 
spoke as by some mighty orchestra, where a thousand 
instruments, all disregarding each other, and so far in 
danger of discord, yet all obedient as slaves to the 
supreme baton of some great leader, terminate in a 
perfection of harmony like that of heart, brain, and 
lungs, in a healthy animal organization. But, finally, 
that particular element in this whole combination 
which most impressed myself, and through Avhich it is 
that to this hour Mr. Palmer's mail-coach system ty- 
rannizes over my dreams by terror and terrific beauty, 
lay in the awful political mission which at that time it 
fulfilled. The mail-coach it was that distributed over 
the face of the land, like the opening of apocalyptic 
vials, the heart-shaking news of Trafalgar, of Sala- 
manca, of Vittoria, of "Waterloo. These were the 
harvests that, in the grandeur of their reaping, re- 
deemed the tears and blood in which they had been 
sown. Neither was the meanest peasant so much 
below the grandeur and the sorrow of the times as to 
confound battles such as these, which were gradually 
moulding the destinies of Christendom, with the vul- 
gar conflicts of ordinary warfare, so often no more 
than gladiatorial trials of national prowess. The 
victories of England in this stupendous contest rose 
of themselves as natural Te Deums to heaven ; and it 
was felt by the thoughtful that such victories, at such 
a crisis of general prostration, were not more benefi- 
cial to ourselves than finally to France, our enemy, 
and to the nations of all western or central Europe, 
through whose pusillanimity it was that the French 
damination had prospered. 



II 



THE GLORT OF MOTION. 12? 

The mail-coacli, as the national organ for publishing 
these mighty events thus diffusively influential, became 
itself a spiritualized and glorified object to an impas- 
sioned heart ; and naturally, in the Oxford of that 
day, all hearts were impassioned, as being all (or 
nearly all) in early manhood. In most universities 
there is one single college ; in Oxford there were five- 
and-twenty, all of which were peopled by young men. 
the elite of their own generation ; not boys, but men ; 
none under eighteen. In some of these many col- 
leges, the custom permitted the student to keep what 
are called ' short terms ; ' that is, the four terms of 
Michaelmas, Lent, Easter, and Act, were kept by a 
residence, in the aggregate of ninety-one days, or 
thirteen weeks. Under this interrupted residence, it 
was possible that a student might have a reason for 
going down to his home four times in the year. This 
made eight journeys to and fro. But, as the homes 
lay dispersed through all the shires of the island, and 
most of us disdained all coaches except his majesty's 
mail, no city out of London could pretend to so ex- 
tensive a connection with Mr. Palmer's establishment 
as Oxford. Three mails, at the least, I remember as 
passing every day through Oxford, and benefiting by 
ray personal patronage — viz., the Worcester, the Glou- 
cester, and the Holyhead mail. Naturally, therefore, 
it became a point of some interest with us, whose jour- 
neys revolved every six weeks on an average, to look 
a little into the executive details of the system. With 
some of these Mr. Palmer had no concern ; they rested 
upon bye-laws enacted by posting-houses for their own 
benefit, and upon other bye-laws, equally stern, enacted 
by the inside passengers for the illustration of their own 



128 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

haughty exclusiveness. These last were of a nature to 
rouse our scorn, from which the transition was not 
very long to systematic mutiny. Up to this time, say 
1804, or 1805 (the year of Trafalgar), it had been the 
fixed assumption of the four inside people (as an old 
tradition of all public carriages derived from the reigu 
of Charles II.), that they, the illustrious quaternion, 
constituted a porcelain variety of the human race, 
whose dignity would have been compromised by ex- 
changing one word of civility Avith the three miserable 
delf-ware outsides. Even to have kicked an outsider, 
might have been held to attaint the foot concerned in 
that operation ; so that, perhaps, it would have re- 
quired an act of parliament to restore its piurity of 
blood. What words, then, could express the horror, 
and the sense of treason, in that case, which had hap- 
pened, where all three outsides (the trinity of Pariahs) 
made a vain attempt to sit down at the same breakfast- 
table or dinner-table with the consecrated four ? I 
myself witnessed such an attempt ; and on that occa- 
sion a benevolent old gentleman endeavored to soothe 
his three holy associates, by suggesting that, if the 
outsides were indicted for this criminal attempt at the 
next assizes, the court would regard it as a case of 
lunacy, or delirium tremens, rather than of treason. 
England owes much of her grandeur to the depth of 
the aristocratic element in her social composition, Avhen 
pulling against her strong democracy. I am not the 
man to laugh at it. But sometimes, undoubtedly, it 
expressed itself in comic shapes. The course taken 
with the infatuated outsiders, in the particular attempt 
which I have noticed, was, that the waiter, beckoning 
Ihem away from the privileged salle-d-manger, sang 



THE GLOKY Or MOTION". 128 

out, ' This way, my good men,' and then enticed these 
good men away to the kitchen. But that plan had 
not always answered. Sometimes, though rarely, 
cases occurred where the intruders, being stronger 
than usual, or more vicious than usual, resolutely 
refused to budge, and so far carried their point, as to 
have a separate table arranged for themselves in a 
corner of the general room. Yet, if an Indian screen 
could be found ample enough to plant them out from 
the very eyes of the high table, or dais, it then be- 
came possible to assume as a fiction of law — that the 
three dclf fellows, after all, were not present. They 
could be ignored ' by the porcelain men, under the 
maxim, that objects not appearing, and not existing, 
are governed by the same logical construction. ^ 

Such being, at that time, the usages of mail-coaches, 
what was to be done by us of young Oxford ? We, 
the most aristocratic of people, who were addicted to 
the practice of looking down superciliously even upon 
the insides themselves as often very questionable 
characters — were we, by voluntarily going outside, to 
court indignities ? If our dress and bearing sheltered 
us, generally, from the suspicion of being ' raff ' (the 
name at that period for ' snobs ' ^), we really were such 
constructively, by the place we assumed. If we did 
not submit to the deep shadow of eclipse, we entered 
at least the skirts of its penumbra. And the analogy 
of theatres was valid against us, where no man can 
complain of the annoyances incident to the pit or gal- 
lery, having his instant remedy in paying the higher 
price of the boxes. But the soundness of this analogy 
we disputed. In the case of the theatre, it cannot be 
pretended that the inferior situations have any separate 



130 THE ENGLISH MAIX-COACH. 

attractions, unless tlie pit may be supposed to have aa 
advantage for the purposes of the critic or the dramatic 
reporter. But the critic or reporter is a rarity. For 
most people, the sole benefit is in the price. Now, on 
the contrary, the outside of the mail had its own in- 
communicable advantages. These we could not fore- 
go. The higher price we would willingly have paid, 
but not the price connected with the condition of riding 
inside ; which condition we pronounced insufi'erable. 
The air, the freedom of prospect, the proximity to the 
horses, the elevation of seat — these were what we 
required ; but, above all, the certain anticipation of 
purchasing occasional opportunities of driving. 

Such was the difficulty which pressed us ; and under 
the coercion of this difficulty, we instituted a searching 
inquiry into the true quality and valuation of the dif- 
ferent apartments about the mail. We conducted 
this inquiry on metaphysical principles ; and it was 
ascertained satisfactorily, that the roof of the coach, 
which by some weak men had been called the attics, 
and by some the garrets, was in reality the drawing- 
room ; in which drawing-room the box was the chief 
ottoman or sofa ; whilst it appeared that the iiiside^ 
which had been traditionally regarded as the only room 
tenantable by gentlemen, was, in fact, the coal-cellar 
in disguise. 

Great wits jump. The very same idea had not long 
before struck the celestial intellect of China. Amongst 
the presents carried out by our first embassy to that 
country was a state-coach. It had been specially 
selected as a personal gift by George III. ; but the ex- 
act mode of using it was an immense mystery to Pekin. 
The ambassador, indeed (Lord Macartney), had made 



THE GLOET OF MOTION. 131 

some imperfect explanations upon this point ; but, as 
his excellency communicated these in a diplomatic 
whisper, at the very moment of his departure, the 
celestial intellect was very feebly illuminated, and it 
became necessary to call a cabinet council on the grand 
state question, ' Where was the emperor to sit ? ' Tha 
hammer-cloth happened to be unusually gorgeous ; 
and partly on that consideration, but partly also be- 
cause the box offered the most elevated seat, was 
nearest to the moon, and undeniably went foremost, it 
was resolved by acclamation that the box was the im- 
perial throne, and for the scoundrel who drove, he 
might sit where he could find a perch. The horses, 
therefore, being harnessed, solemnly his imperial 
majesty ascended his new English throne under a 
flourish of trumpets, having the first lord of the treas- 
ury on his right hand, and the chief jester on his left. 
Pekin gloried in the spectacle ; and in the whole 
flowery people, constructively present by representa- 
tion, there was but one discontented person, and that 
was the coachman. This mutinous individual auda- 
ciously shouted, ' Where am I to sit ? ' But the privy 
council, incensed by his disloyalty, unanimously 
opened the door, and kicked him into the inside. He 
had all the inside places to himself; but such is the 
rapacity of ambition, that he was still dissatisfied. ' I 
say,' he cried out in an extempore petition, addressed 
to the emperor through the window — ' I say, how 
am I to catch hold of the reins ? ' — ' Anyhow,' was the 
imperial answer ; ' don't trouble me, man, in my glory. 
How catch the reins ? Why, through the windows, 
tlirough the keyholes — anyhow.' Finally this con- 
tumacious coachman lengthened the check-strings into 



132 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

a sort of jury-reins, communicating with the horses j 
with these he drove as steadily as Pekin had any right 
to expect. The emperor returned after the briefest of 
circuits ; he descended in great pomp from his throne, 
with the severest resolution never to remount it. A 
public thanksgiving was ordered for his majesty's 
happy escape from the disease of broken neck ; and 
the state-coach was dedicated thenceforward as a 
votive offering to the god Fo, Fo — whom the learned 
more accurately called Fi, Fi. 

A revolution of this same Chinese character did 
young Oxford of that era effect in the constitution of 
mail-coach society. It was a perfect French revolu- 
tion ; and we had good reason to say, pa ira. In fact, 
it soon became too popular. The ' public,' a well- 
known character, particularly disagreeable, though 
slightly respectable, and notorious for affecting the 
chief seats in synagogues — had at first loudly op- 
posed this revolution ; but when the opposition showed 
itself to be ineffectual, our disagreeable friend went 
into it with headlong zeal. At first it was a sort of 
race between us ; and, as the public is usually from 
thirty to fifty years old, naturally we of young Oxford, 
that averaged about twenty, had the advantage. Then 
the public took to bribing, giving fees to horse-keep- 
ers, &c., who hired out their persons as warming-pans 
on the box-seat. That, you know, was shocking to 
all moral sensibilities. Come to bribery, said we, and 
there is an end to all morality, Aristotle's, Zeno's, 
Cicero's, or anybody's. And, besides, of what use 
was it ? For we bribed also. And as our bribes to 
those of the public were as five shillings to sixpence, 
here again young Oxford had the advantage. But the 



THE OrOET OF MOTION. 133 

contest was ruinous to tlie principles of the stables 
connected with the mails. This whole corporation 
was constantly bribed, rebribed, and often sur-rebribed ; 
a mail-coach yard was like the hustings in a contested 
election ; and a horse-keeper, hostler, or helper, was 
held by the philosophical at that time to be the most 
corrupt character in the nation. 

There was an impression upon the public mind, 
natural enough from the continually augmenting ve- 
locity of the mail, but quite erroneous, that an outside 
seat on this class of carriages was a post of danger. 
On the contrary, I maintained that, if a man had be- 
come nervous from some gipsy prediction in his child- 
hood, allocating to a particular moon now approaching 
some unknown danger, and he should inquire earnest- 
ly, ' Whither can I fly for shelter ? Is a prison the 
safest retreat ? or a lunatic hospital ? or the British 
Museum ? ' I should have replied, ' Oh, no ; I'll tell 
you what to do. Take lodgings for the next forty 
days on the box of his majesty's mail. Nobody can 
touch you there. If it is by bills at ninety days after 
date that you are made unhappy — if noters and pro- 
testers are the sort of wretches whose astrological 
shadows darken the house of life — then note you what 
I vehemently protest — viz., that no matter though the 
sheriff and under-sheriff in every county should be run- 
ning after you with his posse, touch a hair of your 
head he cannot whilst you keep house, and have your 
legal domicile on the box of the mail. It is felony to 
stop the mail ; even the sheriff cannot do that. And 
an extra touch of the whip to the leaders (no great 
matter if it grazes the sheriff) at any time guarantees 
your safety.' In fact, a bedroom in a quiet house 



134 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

Beems a safe enougli retreat, yet it is liable to its own 
notorious nuisances — to robbers by nigbt, to rats, to 
fire. But the mail laughs at these terrors. To robbers, 
the answer is packed up and ready for delivery in the 
barrel of the guard's blunderbuss. Rats again ! — there 
are none about mail-coaches, any more than snakes in 
Von Troil's Iceland ; ^ except, indeed, now and then a 
parliamentary rat, who always hides his shame in what 
I have shown to be the ' coal-cellar.' And as to fire, 
I never knew but one in a mail-coach, which was in 
the Exeter mail, and caused by an obstinate sailor 
bound to Devonport. Jack, making light of the law 
and the lawgiver that had set their faces against his 
oifence, insisted on taking up a forbidden seat "^ in the 
rear of the roof, from which he could exchange his 
OAvn yarns with those of the guard. No greater of- 
fence was then known to mail-coaches : it was treason, 
it was Icesa majestas, it was by tendency arson ; and 
the ashes of Jack's pipe, falling amongst the straw of 
the hinder boot containing the mail-bags, raised a 
flame which (aided by the wind of our motion) threat- 
ened a revolution in the republic of letters. Yet even 
this left the sanctity of the box unviolated. In dig- 
nified repose, the coachman and myself sat on, resting 
with benign composure upon our knowledge that the 
fire would have to burn its way through four inside 
passengers before it could reach ourselves. I remark- 
ed to the coachman, with a quotation from Virgil's 
* uiEneid ' really too hackneyed — 

• Jam proximus ardet 
XJcalegon.' 

But, recollecting that the Virgilian part of the coach- 
man's education might have been neglected, I inter- 



THE OLORT OF MOTION. 136 

preted so far as to say, that perhaps at that moment 
the flames were catching hold of our worthy brother 
and inside passenger, Ucalegon. The coachman made 
no answer, which is my own way when a stranger 
addresses me either in Syriac or in Coptic, but by his 
faint sceptical smile he seemed to insinuate that he 
knew better ; for that Ucalegon, as it happened, was 
not in the way-bill, and therefore could not have been 
booked. 

No dignity is perfect which does not at some point 
ally itself with the mysterious. The connection of 
the mail with the state and the executive government 
— a connection obvious, but yet not strictly defined — 
gave to the whole mail establishment an official gran- 
deur which did us service on the roads, and invested 
us with seasonable terrors. Not the less impressive 
were those terrors, because their legal limits were 
imperfectly ascertained. Look at those turnpike gates ; 
with what deferential hurry, with what an obedient 
start, they fly open at our approach ! Look at that 
long line of carts and carters ahead, audaciously 
usurping the very crest of the road. Ah ! traitors, 
they do not hear us as yet ; but, as soon as the dread- 
fid blast of our horn reaches them with proclamation 
of our approach, see with Avhat frenzy of trepidation 
they fly to their horses' heads, and deprecate our 
wrath by the precipitation of their crane-neck quar- 
terings. Treason they feel to be their crime ; each 
individual carter feels himself under the ban of con- 
fiscation and attainder ; his blood is attainted through 
si.x generations ; and nothing is wanting but the heads- 
man and his axe, the block and the saw-dust, to close 
up the vista of his horrors. What ! shall it be within 



136 THE ENGIiISH MAIL-COACH. 

benefit of clergy to delay the king's message on the 
high road ? — to interrupt the great respirations, ebb 
and flood, systole and diastole, of the national inter- 
course ? — to endanger the safety of tidings, running 
day and night between all nations and languages ? 
Or can it be fancied, amongst the weakest of men, 
that the bodies of the criminals will be given up to 
their widows for Christian burial? Now the doubts 
which were raised as to our powers did more to wrap 
them in terror, by wrapping them in uncertainty, than 
could have been effected by the sharpest definitions of 
the law from the Quarter Sessions. We, on our parts 
(we, the collective mail, I mean), did our utmost to 
exalt the idea of our privileges by the insolence with 
which we wielded them. Whether this insolence 
rested upon law that gave it a sanction, or upon con- 
scious power that haughtily dispensed with that sanc- 
tion, equally it spoke from a potential station ; and 
the agent, in each particular insolence of the moment, 
was Aiewed reverentially, as one having authority. 

Sometimes after breakfast his majesty's mail would 
become frisky ; and in its difficult wheelings amongst 
the intricacies of early markets, it would upset an 
apple-cart, a cart loaded with eggs, &c. Huge was 
the affliction and dismay, awful was the smash. I, as 
far as possible, endeavored in such a case to represent 
the conscience and moral sensibilities of the mail ; 
and, when wildernesses of eggs were lying poached 
under our horses' hoofs, then would I stretch forth 
my hands in sorrow saying (in words too celebrated at 
that time, from the false echoes ^ of Marengo), 'Ah! 
wherefore have we not time to weep over you ? ' which 
was evidently impossible, since, in fact, we had not 



THE GLORY OF MOTION. 137 

time to langli over them. Tied to post-office allow- 
ance, in some cases of fifty minutes for eleven miles, 
could the royal mail pretend to undertake the offices 
of sympathy and condolence ? Could it be expected 
to provide tears for the accidents of the road ? If 
even it seemed to trample on humanity, it did so, I 
felt, in discharge of its own more peremptory duties. 

Upholding the morality of the mail, a fortiori I 
upheld its rights ; as a matter of duty, I stretched to 
the uttermost its privilege of imperial precedency, and 
astonished weak minds by the feudal powers which I 
hinted to be lurking constructively in the charters of 
this proud establishment. Once I remember being ou 
the box of the Holyhead mail, between Shrewsbury 
and Oswestry, when a tawdry thing from Birmingham, 
some ' Tallyho ' or ' Highflyer,' all flaunting with 
green and gold, came up alongside of us. What a 
contrast to our royal simplicity of form and color in 
this plebeian wretch ! The single ornament on our 
dark ground of chocolate color was the mighty 
shield of the imperial arms, but emblazoned in pro- 
portions as modest as a signet-ring bears to a seal of 
office. Even this was displayed only on a single 
panel, whispering, rather than proclaiming, our rela- 
tions to the mighty state ; whilst the beast from Bir- 
mingham, our green-and-gold friend from false, fleet- 
ing, perjured Brummagem, had as much writing and 
painting on its sprawling flanks as would have puzzled 
a decipherer from the tombs of Luxor. For some 
time this Birmingham machine ran along by our side 
— a piece of familiarity that already of itself seemed 
to me sufficiently Jacobinical. But all at once a move- 
ment of the horses announced a desperate intention of 
12 



138 THE EKGLISH MAII<-COACH. 

leaving us bebind. ' Do you see that ? ' I said to i\at 
coachman. — ' I see,' was his short answer. He was 
wide awake, yet he waited longer than seemed pru- 
dent ; for the horses of our audacious opponent had a 
disagreeable air of freshness and power. But his 
motive was loyal ; his wish was, that the Birmingham 
conceit should be full-blown before he froze it. When 
that seemed right, he unloosed, or, to speak by a 
stronger word, he sprang, his known resources : he 
slipped our royal horses like cheetahs, or hunting- 
leopards, after the affrighted game. How they could 
retain such a reserve of fiery power after the work 
they had accomplished, seemed hard to explain. But 
on our side, besides the physical superiority, was a 
lower of moral strength, namely, the king's name, 
' which they upon the adverse faction wanted.' Pass- 
ing them without an effort, as it seemed, we threw 
them into the rear with so lengthening an interval 
between us, as proved in itself the bitterest mockery 
of their presumption ; whilst our guard blew back a 
shattering blast of triumph, that was really too pain- 
fully full of derision. 

I mention this little incident for its connection with 
what followed. A Welsh rustic, sitting behind me, 
asked if I had not felt my heart burn within me 
during the progress of the race ? I said, with phi- 
losophic calmness, No ; because we were not racing 
with a mail, so that no glory could be gained. In 
fact, it was sufficiently mortifying that such a Birming- 
ham thing should dare to challenge us. The Welsh- 
man replied, that he didn't see that; for that a cat 
might look at a king, and a Brummagem coach might 
lawfully race the Holyhead mail. ' Race us, if you 



THE GtORT OF MOTION. 139 

like,' I replied, ' though even that has an air of sedi- 
tion, but not leat us. This would have been treason ; 
and for its own sake I am glad that the " Tallyho" was 
disappointed.' So dissatisfied did the Welshman seem 
with this opinion, that at last I was obliged to tell him a 
very fine story from one of our elder dramatists — viz., 
that once, in some far oriental kingdom, when the 
sultan of all the land, with his princes, ladies, and 
chief omrahs, were flying their falcons, a hawk sud- 
denly flew at a majestic eagle ; and in defiance of the 
eagle's natural advantages, in contempt also of the 
eagle's traditional royalty, and before the whole as- 
sembled field of astonished spectators from Agra, and 
Lahore, killed the eagle on the spot. Amazement 
seized the sultan at the unequal contest, and burning 
admiration for its unparalleled result. He commanded 
that the hawk should be brought before him ; he 
caressed the bird with enthusiasm ; and he ordered 
that, for the commemoration of his matchless courage, 
a diadem of gold and rubies should be solemnly placed 
on the hawk's head ; but then that, immediately after 
this solemn coronation, the bird should be led ofi" to 
execution, as the most valiant indeed of traitors, but 
not the less a traitor, as having dared to rise rebel- 
liously against his liege lord and anointed sovereign, 
the eagle. ' Now,' said I to the "Welshman, ' to you 
and me, as men of refined sensibilities, how painful it 
would have been that this poor Brummagem brute, 
the " Tallyho," in the impossible case of a victory over 
us, should have been crowned with Birmingham tinsel, 
■tvith paste diamonds, and Roman pearls, and then led 
off to instant execution.' The Welshman doubted if 
that could be warranted by law. And when I hinted 



140 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

at the 6tli of Edward Longshanks, chap. 18, for regu* 
lating tlie precedency of coaches, as being probably 
the statute relied on for the capital punishment of 
such offences, he replied drily, that if the attempt to 
pass a mail really were treasonable, it was a pity that 
the ' Tallyho ' appeared to have so imperfect an ac- 
• quaintance with law. 

The modern modes of travelling cannot compare 
with the old mail-coach system in grandeur and 
power. They boast of more velocity, not, however, 
as a consciousness, but as a fact of our lifeless knowl- 
edge, resting upon alien evidence ; as, for instance, 
because somebody says that we have gone fifty miles 
in the hour, though we are far from feeling it as a per- 
sonal experience, or upon the evidence of a result, as 
that actually we find ourselves in York four hours 
after leaving London. Apart from such an assertion, 
or such a result, I myself am little aware of the pace. 
But, seated on the old mail-coach, we needed no evi- 
dence out of ourselves to indicate the velocity. Ou 
this system the word was, Non magna loquimur, as 
upon railways, but vivimus. Yes, ' magna vivimus ; ' 
Ave do not make verbal ostentation of our grandeurs, 
we realize our grandeurs in act, and in the very ex- 
perience of life. The vital experience of the glad 
animal sensibilities made doubts impossible on the 
question of oui* speed ; we heard our speed, we saw it, 
we felt it as a thrilling ; and this speed was not the 
product of blind insensate agencies, that had no sym- 
pathy to give, but was incarnated in the fiery eyeballs 
of the noblest amongst brutes, in his dilated nostril, 
spasmodic muscles, and thunder-beating hoofs. The 
sensibility of the horse, uttering itself in the maniac 



THE GLORT OF MOTION. 141 

iSght of his eye, miglit be the last vibration of such a 
movement ; the glory of Salamanca might be the first. 
But the intervening links that connected them, that 
spread the eai-thquake of battle into the eyeball of the 
horse, were the heart of man and its electric thrillings 
— kindling in the rapture of the fiery strife, and then 
propagating its own tumults by contagious shouts and 
gestures to the heart of his servant the horse. 

But now, on the new system of travelling, iron 
tubes and boilers have disconnected man's heart from 
the ministers of his locomotion. Nile nor Trafalgar 
has power to raise an extra bubble in a steam-kettle. 
The galvanic cycle is broken up for ever ; man's impe- 
rial nature no longer sends itself forward through the 
electric sensibility of the horse ; the inter-agencies are 
gone in the mode of communication between the horse 
and his master, out of which grew so many aspects of 
sublimity under accidents of mists that hid, or sudden 
blazes that revealed, of mobs that agitated, or midnight 
solitudes that awed. Tidings, fitted to convulse all 
nations, must henceforwards travel by culinary pro- 
cess ; and the trumpet that once announced from afar 
the laurelled mail, heart-shaking, when heard scream- 
ing on the wind, and proclaiming itself through the 
darkness to every village or solitary house on its route, 
has now given way for ever to the pot-wallopings of 
the boiler. 

Thus have perished multiform openings for public 
expressions of interest, scenical yet natural, in great 
national tidings ; for revelations of faces and groups 
that could not offer themselves amongst the fluctuating 
mobs of a railway station. The gatherings of gazers 
about a laurelled mail had one centre, and acknowl- 



1.42 THE ENGLISH MAIX-COACH. 

edged one sole interest. But the crowds attending at 
a railway station have as little unity as running water, 
and own as many centres as there are separate car- 
riages in the train. 

How else, for example, than as a constant watcher 
for the dawn, and for the London mail that in summer 
months entered about daybreak amongst the lawny 
thickets of Marlborough forest, couldst thou, sweet 
Fanny of the Bath road, have become the glorified 
inmate of my dreams? Yet Fanny, as the loveliest 
young woman for face and person that perhaps in my 
whole life I have beheld, merited the station which 
even now, from a distance of forty years, she holds in 
my dreams ; yes, though by links of natural association 
she brings along with her a troop of dreadful creatures, 
fabulous and not fabulous, that are more abominable 
to the heart, than Fanny and the dawn are delightful. 

Miss Fanny of the Bath road, strictly speaking, 
lived at a mile's distance from the road ; but came so 
continually to meet the mail, that I on my frequent 
transits rarely missed her, and natiirally connected her 
image with the great thoroughfare where only I had 
ever seen her. Why she came so punctually, I do not 
exactly know ; but I believe with some burden of 
commissions to be executed in Bath, which had gath- 
ered to her own residence as a central rendezvous for 
converging them. The mail-coachman who drove the 
Bath mail, and wore the royal livery,^ happened to be 
Fanny's grandfather. A good man he was, that loved 
his beautiful granddaughter ; and, loving her wisely, 
was vigilant over her deportment in any case where 
young Oxford might happen to be concerned. Did my 
vanity then suggest that I myself, individually, could fall 



THE GXOKY OF MOTION. 148 

withiu the line of Hs terrors? Certainly not, as 
regarded any physical pretensions that I could plead ; 
for Fanny (as a chance passenger from her own neigh- 
borhood once told me) counted in her train a hundred 
and ninety-nine professed admirers, if not open aspi- 
rants to her favor ; and probably not one of the whole 
brigade but excelled myself in personal advantages. 
Ulysses even, with the unfair advantage of his accursed 
bow, could hardly have undertaken that amount of 
suitors. So the danger might have seemed slight — 
only that woman is universally aristocratic ; it is 
amongst her nobilities of heart that she is so. Now, 
the aristocratic distinctions in my favor might easily 
with Miss Fanny have compensated my physical defi- 
ciencies. Did I then make love to Fanny ? Why, 
yes ; about as much love as one could make whilst the 
mail was changing horses — a process which, ten years 
later, did not occupy above eighty seconds ; but then 
— viz., about Waterloo — it occupied five times eighty. 
Now, four hundred seconds ofier a field quite ample 
enough for whispering into a young woman's ear a 
great deal of truth, and (by way of parenthesis) some 
trifle of falsehood. Grandpapa did right, therefore, to 
watch me. And yet, as happens too often to the 
grandpapas of earth, in a contest with the admirers of 
granddaughters, how vainly would he have watched 
me had I meditated any evil whispers to Fanny ! She, 
it is my belief, would have protected herself against 
any man's evil suggestions. But he, as the result 
showed, could not have intercepted the opportunities 
for such suggestions. Yet, why not ? Was he not 
active ? Was he not blooming ? Blooming he was as 
Fanny herself. 



144 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

• Say, all our praises why should lords ' 

Stop, that's not the line. 

' Say, all our roses why should girls engross ? ' 

The coachman showed rosy blossoms on his face 
deeper even than his granddaughter's — Ms being 
drawn from the ale cask, Fanny's from the fountains 
of the dawn. But, in spite of his blooming face, some 
infirmities he had ; and one particularly in which he 
too much resembled a crocodile. This lay in a mon- 
strous inaptitude for turning round. The crocodile, I 
presume, owes that inaptitude to the absurd length of 
his back ; but in our grandpapa it arose rather from 
the absurd breadth of his back, combined, possibly, 
■with some growing stiffness in his legs. Now, upon 
this crocodile infirmity of his I planted a human ad- 
vantage for tendering my homage to Miss Fanny. In 
defiance of all his honorable vigilance, no sooner had 
he presented to us his mighty Jovian back (what a 
field for displaying to mankind his royal scarlet ! '), 
whilst inspecting professionally the buckles, the straps, 
and the silvery turrets ^° of his harness, than I raised 
Miss Fanny's hand to my lips, and, by the mixed ten- 
derness and respectfulness of my manner, caused her 
easily to understand how happy it would make me to 
rank upon her list as No. 10 or 12, in which case a 
few casualties amongst her lovers (and observe, they 
hanged liberally in those days might have promoted 
me speedily to the top of the tree ; as, on the other 
hand, with how much loyalty of submission I acqui- 
esced by anticipation in her award, supposing that she 
should plant me in the very rearward of her favor, as 
No. 199 -|-1- Most truly I loved this beautiful and 
ingenuous girl; and had it not been for the Bath 



THE GLOKT OF MOTION. 146 

mail, timing all courtships by post-office allowance, 
heaven only knows what might have come of it. Peo- 
ple talk of being over head and ears in love ; now, the 
mail was the cause that I sank only over ears in love, 
which, you know, still left a trifle of brain to overlook 
the whole conduct of the affair. 

Ah, reader ! when I look back upon those days, it 
seems to me that all things change — all things perish 
' Perish the roses and the palms of kings : ' perish even, 
the crowns and trophies of Waterloo : thunder and 
lightning are not the thunder and lightning which I 
remember. Roses are degenerating. The Fannies of 
our island — though this I say with reluctance — are 
not visibly improving ; and the Bath road is notoriously 
superannuated. Crocodiles, you will say, are station- 
ary. Mr. Waterton tells me that the crocodile does 
not change ; that a cayman, in fact, or an alligator, is 
just as good for riding upon as he was in the time of 
the Pharaohs. That may be ; but the reason is, that 
the crocodile does not live fast — he is a slow coach. 
I believe it is generally understood among naturalists, 
that the crocodile is a blockhead. It is my own im- 
pression that the Pharaohs were also blockheads. 
Now, as the Pharaohs and the crocodile domineered 
over Egyptian society, this accounts for a singular 
mistake that prevailed through innumerable genera- 
tions on the Nile. The crocodile made the ridiculous 
blunder of supposing man to be meant chiefly for his 
own eating. Man, taking a different view of the sub- 
ject, naturally met that mistake by another : he viewed 
the crocodile as a thing sometimes to worship, tut al- 
ways to run away from. And this continued until Mr. 
Waterton^' changed the relations between the animals. 
13 



146 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

The mode of escaping from the reptile he showed to 
be, not by running away, but by leaping on its back, 
booted and spurred. The two animals had misunder- 
stood each other. The use of the crocodile has now 
been cleared up — viz., to be ridden; and the final 
cause of man is, that he may improve the health of the 
crocodile by riding him a fox-hunting before breakfast. 
And it is pretty certain that any crocodile, who has 
been regularly hunted through the season, and is mas- 
ter of the weight he carries, will take a six-barred gate 
now as well as ever he would have done in the infancy 
of the pyramids. 

If, therefore, the crocodile does not change, all things 
else undeniably do : even the shadow of the pyramids 
grows less. And often the restoration in vision of 
Fanny and the Bath road, makes me too pathetically 
sensible of that truth. Out of the darkness, if I hap- 
pen to call back the image of Fanny, up rises suddenly 
from a gulf of forty years a rose in June ; or, if I think 
for an instant of the rose in June, up rises the heavenly 
face of Fanny. One after the other, like the antipho- 
nies in the choral service, rise Fanny and the rose in 
June, then back again the rose in June and Fanny. 
Then come both together, as in a chorus — roses and 
Fannies, Fannies and roses, without end, thick as blos- 
soms in paradise. Then comes a venerable crocodile, 
in a royal livery of scarlet and gold, with sixteen 
capes ; and the crocodile is driving four-in-hand from 
the box of the Bath maU. And suddenly we upon the 
mail are pulled up by a mighty dial, sculptured with 
the hours, that mingle with the heavens and the hea- 
venly host. Then all at once we are arrived at Marl- 
borough forest, amongst the lovely households ^2 of the 



ij 



THE GLORY OF MOTION. 147 

roe-doer ; the deer and their fawns retire into the 
dewy thickets ; the thickets are rich with roses ; once 
again the roses call up the sweet countenance of Fanny ; 
and she, being the granddaughter of a crocodile, awak- 
ens a dreadful host of semi-legendary animals — griffins, 
dragons, basilisks, sphinxes — till at length the whole 
vision of fighting images crowds into one towering 
armorial shield, a vast emblazoni-y of human charities 
and human loveliness that have perished, but quartered 
heraldically with unutterable and demoniac natures, 
whilst over all rises, as a surmounting crest, one fair 
female hand, with the forefinger pointing, in sweet, 
sorrowful admonition, upwards to heaven, where is 
sculptured the eternal writing which proclaims the 
frailty of earth and her children. 

GOING DOWN "WITH YICTORY. 

But the grandest chapter of our experience, within 
the whole mail-coach service, was on those occasions 
when we went down from London with the news of 
victory. A period of about ten years stretched from 
Trafalgar to Waterloo ; the second and thu'd years of 
which period (1806 and 1807) were comparatively 
sterile ; but the other nine (from 1805 to 1815 inclu- 
sively) furnished a long succession of victories ; the 
least of which, in such a contest of Titans, had an 
inappreciable value of position — partly for its absolute 
interference with the plans of our enemy, but still more 
from its keeping alive through central Europe the 
sense of a deep-seated vulnerability in France. Even 
to tease the coasts of our enemy, to mortify them by 
continual blockades, to insult them by capturing if it 
were but a baubling schooner under the eyes of their 



148 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

arrogant armies, repeated from time to time a sullen 
])roclamatioii of power lodged in one quarter to which 
the hopes of Christendom turned in secret. How much 
more loudly must this proclamation have spoken in the 
audacity ^3 of having hearded the elite of their troops, 
and having beaten them in pitched battles ! Five years 
of life it was worth paying down for the privilege of an 
outside place on a mail-coach, when carrying down the 
first tidings of any such event. And it is to be noted 
that, from our insular situation, and the multitude of 
our frigates disposable for the rapid transmission of 
intelligence, rarely did any unauthorized rumor steal 
away a prelibation from the first aroma of the regular 
despatches. The government news was generally the 
earliest news. 

From eight p. m., to fifteen or twenty minutes later, 
imagine the mails assembled on parade in Lombard 
Street, where, at that time,^'* and not in St. Martin's- 
le-Grand, was seated the General Post-ofnce. In what 
exact strength we mustered I do not remember ; but, 
from th,e length of each separate attelage, we filled the 
street, though a long one, and though we were drawn 
up in double file. On any night the spectacle was 
beautiful. The absolute perfection of all the appoint- 
ments about the carriages and the harness, their 
strength, their brilliant cleanliness, their beautiful 
simplicity — but, more than all, the royal magnificence 
of the horses — were what might first have fixed the 
attention. Every carriage, on every morning in the 
year, was taken down to an official inspector for exam- 
ination — wheels, axles, linchpins, poles, glasses, lamps, 
were all critically probed and tested. Every part of 
every carriage had been cleaned,, every horse had been 



THE GLOBY OF MOTION. 149 

groomed, ■\vitb as mucli rigor as if they belonged to a 
private gentleman ; and that part of the spectacle 
offered itself always. But the night before us is a 
ivight of victory ; and, behold ! to the ordinary display, 
what a heart-shaking addition! — horses, men, car- 
riages, all are dressed in laurels and flowers, oak-leaves 
and ribbons. The guards, as being officially his Maj- 
esty's servants, and of the coachmen such as are within 
the privilege of the post-office, wear the royal liveries 
cf course ; and as it is summer (for all the land victo- 
ries were naturally Avon in summer), they wear, on this 
fine evening, these liveries exposed to view, without 
any covering of upper coats. Such a costume, and the 
elaborate arrangement of the laurels in their hats, dilate 
their hearts, by giving to them openly a personal con- 
nection with the great news, in which already they 
have the general interest of patriotism. That great 
national sentiment surmounts and quells all sense of 
ordinary distinctions. Those passengers who happen 
to be gentlemen arc now hardly to be distinguished as 
such except by dress ; for the usual reserve of their 
manner in speaking to the attendants has on this night 
melted away. One heai't, one pride, one glory, con- 
nects every man by the transcendent bond of his 
national blood. The spectators, who are numerous 
beyond precedent, express theii* sympathy with these 
fervent feelings by continual hurrahs. Every moment 
are shouted aloud by the post-office servants, and sum- 
moned to draw up, the great ancestral names of cities 
known to history through a thousand years — Lincoln, 
Winchester, Portsmouth, Gloucester, Oxford, Bristol, 
Manchester, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, 
Perth, Stirling, Aberdeen — expressing the grandeur 



150 THE ENGIilSH MAIL-COACH. 

of the empire by the antiquity of its towns, and the 
grandeur of the mail establishment by the diffusive 
radiation of its separate missions. Every moment you 
hear thunder of lids locked down upon the mail-bags. 
That sound to each individual mail is the signal for 
drawing off, which process is the finest part of the 
entire spectacle. Then come the horses into play. 
Horses ! can these be horses that bound off with the 
action and gestures of leopards ? What stir ! — what 
sea-like ferment ! — what a thundering of wheels ! — 
what a trampling of hoofs ! — what a sounding of 
trumpets ! — what farewell cheers — what redoubling 
peals of brotherly congratulation, connecting the name 
of the particular mail — ' Liverpool for ever ! ' — with 
the name of the particular victory — ' Badajoz for 
ever ! ' or ' Salamanca for ever ! ' The half-slumbering 
consciousness that, all night long and all the next 
day — perhaps for even a longer period — many of 
these mails, like fire racing along a train of gunpow- 
der, will be kindling at every instant new successions 
of burning joy, has an obscure effect of multiplying 
the victory itself, by multiplying to the imagination 
into infinity the stages of its progressive diffusion. A 
fiery arrow seems to be let loose, which from that mo- 
ment is destined to travel, without intermission, west- 
wards for three hundred ^^ miles — northwards for 
six hundred ; and the sympathy of our Lombard 
Street friends at parting is exalted a hundredfold by 
a sort of visionary sympathy with the yet slumbering 
sympathies which in so vast a succession we are going 
to awake. 

Liberated from the embarrassments of the city, and 
issuing into the broad uncrowded avenues of the north- 



k 



THE EJfGLISH MAIL-COACH. 151 

em suburbs, we soon begin to enter upon our natural 
pace of ten miles an hour. In the broad ligbt of the 
summer evening, the sun, perhaps, only just at the 
point of setting, we are seen from every story of every 
house. Heads of every age crowd to the windows — 
young and old understand the language of our victori- 
ous symbols — and rolling volleys of sympathizing 
cheers ran along us, behind us, and before us. The 
beggar, rearing himself against the wall, forgets his 
lameness — real or assumed — thinks not of his whin- 
ing trade, but stands erect, with bold exulting smiles, 
as we pass him. The victory has healed him, and 
says. Be thou whole ! Women and children, from 
garrets alike and cellars, through infinite London, look 
down or look up with loving eyes upon our gay rib- 
bons and our martial laurels ; sometimes kiss their 
hands ; sometimes hang out, as signals of afi"ection, 
pocket-handkerchiefs, aprons, dusters, anything that, 
by catching the summer breezes, will express an aerial 
jubilation. On the London side of Barnet, to which 
we draw near within a few minutes after nine, observe 
that private carriage which is approaching us. The 
weather being so warm, the glasses are all down ; and 
one may read, as on the stage of a theatre, everything 
that goes on within. It contains three ladies — one 
likely to be ' mamma,' and two of seventeen or eigh- 
teen, who are probably her daughters. What lovely 
animation, what beautiful unpremeditated pantomime, 
explaining to us every syllable that passes, in these in- 
genuous girls ! By the sudden start and raising of the 
hands, on first discovering our laurelled equipage ! — 
by the sudden movement and appeal to the elder lady 
from both of them — and by the heightened color on 



152 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

their animated countenances, we can almost hear thenj 
saying, ' See, see ! Look at their laurels ! Oh, 
mamma ! there has been a great battle in Spain , 
and it has been a great victory.' In a moment we 
are on the point of passing them. We passengers — 
I on the box, and the two on the roof behind me — 
raise our hats to the ladies ; the coachman makes his 
professional salute with the whip ; the guard even, 
though punctilious on the matter of his dignity as an 
officer under the crown, touches his hat. The ladies 
move to us, in return, with a winning graciousness of 
gesture ; all smile on each side in a Avay that nobody 
could misunderstand, and that nothing short of a grand 
national sympathy could so instantaneously prompt. 
"Will these ladies say that we are nothing to tliern 7 
Oh, no ; they will not say that. They cannot deny — 
they do not deny — that for this night they are our 
sisters ; gentle or simple, scholar or illiterate servant, 
for twelve hours to come, we on the outside have the 
honor to be their brothers. Those poor women, again, 
who stop to gaze upon us with delight at the entrance 
of Barnet, and seem, by their air of weariness, to be 
returning from labor — do you mean to say that they 
are washerwomen and charwomen ? Oh, my poor 
friend, you are quite mistaken. I assui-e you they 
stand in a far higher rank ; for this one night they feel 
themselves by birthright to be daughters of England, 
and answer to no humbler title. 

Every joy, however, even rapturous joy — such is 
the sad law of earth — may carry with it grief, or fear 
of grief, to some. Three miles beyond Barnet, we see 
approaching us another private carriage, nearly repeat- 
ing the circumstances of the former case. Here, also, 



THE GLORY OF MOTION. 153 

ttic glasses are all down — here, also, is an elderly 
lady seated ; but the two daughters are missing ; for 
the single young person sitting by the lady's side, 
seems to be an attendant — so I judge from her dress, 
and her air of respectful reserve. The lady is in 
mourning ; and her countenance expresses sorrow. 
At first she does not look up ; so that I believe she 
is not aware of our approach, until she hears the 
measured beating of our horses' hoofs. Then she 
raises her eyes to settle them painfully on our tri- 
umphal equipage. Our decorations explain the case 
to her at once ; but she beholds them with appa- 
rent anxiety, or even with terror. Some time before 
this, I, finding it difficult to hit a flying mark, when 
embarrassed by the coachman's person and reins inter- 
vening, had given to the guard a ' Courier ' evening 
paper, containing the gazette, for the next carriage that 
might pass. Accordingly he tossed it in, so folded 
that the huge capitals expressing some such legend 
as — GLORIOUS VICTORY, might catch the eye at 
once. To see the paper, however, at all, interpreted 
as it was by our ensigns of triumph, explained every- 
thing ; and, if the guard were right in thinking the 
lady to have received it with a gesture of horror 
it could not be doubtful that she had suffered somp 
deep personal affliction in connection Avith this Span- 
ish war. 

Here, now, was the case of one who, having formerly 
Bufl'ered, might, erroneously perhaps, be distressing 
herself with anticipations of another similar suffering. 
That same night, and hardly three hours later, oc- 
curred the reverse case. A poor woman, who too 
probably would find herself, in a day or two, to 



154 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

have suffered the heaviest afflictions by the battle, 
blindly allowed herself to express an exultation so 
unmeasured in the news and its details, as gave to her 
the appearance which amongst Celtic Highlanders is 
called fey. This was at some little town Avhere we 
changed horses an hour or two after midnight. Some 
fair or wake had kept the people up out of their beds^ 
and had occasioned a partial illumination of the stalls 
and booths, presenting an unusual but very impressive 
effect. We saw many lights moving about as we drew 
near ; and perhaps the most striking scene on the 
whole route was our reception at this place. The 
flashing of torches and the beautiful radiance of blue 
lights (technically, Bengal lights) upon the heads of 
our horses ; the fine effect of such a showery and 
ghostly illumination falling upon our flowers and 
glittering laurels ; ^^ whilst all around ourselves, that 
formed a centre of light, the darkness gathered on the 
rear and flanks in massy blackness ; these optical 
splendors, together with the prodigious enthusiasm 
of the people, composed a picture at once scenical 
and affecting, theatrical and holy. As we staid for ' 
three or four minutes, I alighted ; and immediately 
from a dismantled stall in the street, where no doubt 
she had been presiding through the earlier part of the 
night, advanced eagerly a middle-aged woman. The 
sight of my newspaper it was that had drawn her at- 
tention upon myself. The victory which we were 
carrying down to the provinces on this occasion, was 
the imperfect one of Talavera — imperfect for its re- 
sults, such was the virtual treachery of the Spanish 
general, Cuesta, but not imperfect in its ever-memora- 
ble heroism I told her the main outline of the battle. 



THE GLORY OF MOTION. 155 

The agitation of her enthusiasm had been so con- 
spicuous when listening, and when first applying for 
information, that I could not but ask her if she had 
not some relative in the Peninsular army. Oh, yes ; 
her only son a^ as there. In what regiment ? He was 
a trooper in the 23d Dragoons. My heart sank mthin 
me as she made that answer. This sublime regiment, 
which an Englishman should never mention without 
raising his hat to their memory, had made the most 
memorable and effective charge recorded in military 
annals. They leaped their horses — over a trench 
•where they could, into it, and Avith the result of death 
or mutilation when they could not. What proportion 
cleared the trench is nowhere stated. Those who did, 
closed up and went down upon the enemy with such 
divinity of fervor (I use the word divinity by design : 
the inspiration of God must have prompted this move- 
ment to those whom even then he was calling to his 
presence), that two results followed. As regarded the 
enemy, this 23d Dragoons, not, I believe, originally 
three hundred and fifty strong, paralyzed a French 
column, six thousand strong, then ascended the hill, 
and fixed the gaze of the whole French army. As 
regarded themselves, the 23d were supposed at first 
to have been barely not annihilated ; but eventually, 
I believe, about one in four survived. And this, then, 
■was the regiment — a regiment already for some hours 
glorified and hallowed to the ear of all London, as 
lying stretched, by a large majority, upon one bloody 
aceldama — in which the young trooper served whose 
mother was now talking in a spirit of such joyous 
enthusiasm. Did I tell her the truth? Had I the 
heart to break up her dreams ? No. To-morrow, said 
I to myself — to-morrow, or the next day, will publish 



156 THE ENGLISH MA.IL-COACH. 

the worst. For one night more, wherefore should she 
not sleep in peace ? After to-morrow, the chances are 
too many that peace will forsake her pillow. This 
brief respite, then, let her owe to my gift and my for- 
bearance. But, if I told her not of the bloody price 
that had been paid, not, therefore, was I silent on the 
contributions from her son's regiment to that day's ser- 
vice and glory. I showed her not the funeral tanners 
under Avhich the noble regiment was sleeping. I lifted 
not the overshadowing laurels from the bloody trench 
in which horse and rider lay mangled together. But 
I told her how these dear children of England, officers 
and privates, had leaped their horses over all obstacles 
as gayly as hunters to the morning's chase. I told her 
how they rode their horses into the mists of death 
(saying to myself, but not saying to her), and laid 
down their young lives for thee, O mother England ! 
as willingly — poured out their noble blood as cheer- 
fully — as ever, after a long day's sport, when infants, 
they had rested their wearied heads upon their moth- 
er's knees, or had sunk to sleep in her arms. Strange 
it is, yet true, that she seemed to have no fears for her 
son's safety, even after this knowledge that the 23d 
Dragoons had been memorably engaged ; but so much 
Avas she enraptured by the knowledge that Ids regi- 
ment, and therefore that he, had rendered conspicuous 
service in the dreadful conflict — a service which had 
actually made them, within the last twelve ht uxt, the 
foremost topic of conversation in London — so abso- 
lutely was fear swallowed up in joy — that, in the 
mere simplicity of her fervent nature, the poor woman 
threw her arms round my neck, as she thought of her 
son, and gave to me the kiss which secretly was meant 
^nr him. 



I 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

SECTION THE SECOND. — THE VISION OF SUDDEN 
DEATH. 

What is to be taken as the predominant opinion of 
man, reflective and philosophic, upon suddex death? 
It is remarkable that, in difi'erent conditions of society, 
sudden death has been variously regarded as the con- 
summation of an earthly career most fervently to be 
desired, or, again, as that consummation which is with 
most horror to be deprecated. Caesar the Dictator, 
at his last dinner party (ccena), on the very evening 
before his assassination, when the minutes of his earth- 
ly career were numbered, being asked what death, in 
his judgment, might be pronounced the most eligible, 
replied, ' That which should be most sudden.' On 
the other hand, the divine Litany of our English 
Church, when breathing forth supplications, as if in 
some representative character for the whole human 
race prostrate before God, places such a death in the 
very van of horrors : — ' From lightning and tempest ; 
from plague, pestilence, and famine ; from battle and 
murder, and from sudden death — Good Lord, de- 
liver' MS.' Sudden death is here made to crown the 
climax in a grand ascent of calamities ; it is ranked 
among the last of curses ; and yet, by the noblest of 

[157] 



158 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

Romans, it was ranked as the first of blessings. In 
that difference, most readers will see little more than 
fflie essential difference between Christianity and Pa- 
ganism. But this, on consideration, I doubt. The 
Christian Church may be right in its estimate of sud- 
len death ; and it is a natural feeling, though after all 
t may also be an infirm one, to wish for a quiet dis- 
missal from life ■— as that which seems most reconcil- 
able with meditation, with penitential retrospects, and 
with the humilities of farewell prayer. There does 
not, however, occur to me any direct scriptural war- 
rant for this earnest petition of the English Litany, 
unless under a special construction of the word ' sud- 
den.' It seems a petition — indulged rather and con- 
ceded to human infirmity, than exacted from human 
piety. It is not so much a doctrine built upon the 
eternities of the Christian system, as a plausible opin- 
ion built upon special varieties of physical tempera- 
ment. Let that, however, be as it may, two remarks 
suggest themselves as prudent restraints upon a doc- 
trine, which else may wander, and has wandered, into 
an uncharitable superstition. The first is this : that 
many people are likely to exaggerate the horror of a 
sudden death, from the disposition to lay a false stress 
upon words or acts, simply because by an accident 
they have become Jinal words or acts. If a man dies, 
for instance, by some sudden death when he happens 
to be intoxicated, such a death is falsely regarded with 
peculiar horror ; as though the intoxication were sud« 
denly exalted into a blasphemy. But that is unphilo- 
sophic. The man was, or he was not, habitually a 
drunkard. If not, if his intoxication were a solitary 
accident, there can be no reason for allowing special 



THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 159 

empliasis to this act, simply because through misfor- 
tune it became his final act. Nor, on the other hand, 
if it were no accident, but one of his habitual trans- 
gressions, wUl it be the more habitual or the more a 
transgression, because some sudden calamity surprising 
him, has caused this habitual transgression to be also 
a final one. Could the man have had any reason even 
dimly to foresee his own sudden death, there would 
have been a new feature in his act of intemperance — 
feature of presumption and irreverence, as in one that, 
having known himself drawing near to the presence of 
God, should have suited his demeanor to an expecta- 
tion so awful. But this is no part of the case sup- 
posed. And the only new element in the man's act is 
not any element of special immorality, but simply of 
Bpecial misfortune. 

The other remark has reference to the meaning of 
the word sudden. Very possibly Caesar and the Chris- 
tian Church do not difier in the way supposed ; that 
is, do not difier by any difierence of doctrine as be- 
tween Pagan and Christian views of the moral temper 
appropriate to death, but perhaps they are contem- 
plating difierent cases. Both contemplate a violent 
death, a Btadayaro? — death that is jBiaios, or, in other 
words, death that is brought about, not by internal 
and spontaneous change, but by active force, having 
its origin from without. In this meaning the two 
authorities agree. Thus far they are in harmony. 
But the diff'erence is, that the Roman by the word 
• sudden ' means unlingering ; whereas the Christian 
Litany by ' sudden death ' means a death without 
warning, consequently without any available summons 
to religious preparation. The poor mutineer, who 



160 THE ENGLISH MAIL-C( ACH. 

kneels down to gather into his heart the bullets from 
twelve firelocks of his pitying comrades, dies by a 
most sudden death in Csesar's sense ; one shock, one 
mighty spasm, one (possibly not one) groan, and all is 
over. But in the sense of the Litany, the mutineer's 
death is far from sudden ; his offence originally, his 
imprisonment, his trial, the interval between his sen- 
tence and its execution, having all furnished him with 
separate warnings of his fate — having all summoned 
him to meet it with solemn preparation. 

Here at once, in this sharp verbal distinction, we 
comprehend the faithful earnestness with which a holy 
Christian Church pleads on behalf of her poor depart- 
ing children, that God would vouchsafe to them the 
last great privilege and distinction possible on a death- 
bed — viz., the opportunity of untroubled preparation 
for facing this mighty trial. Sudden death, as a mere 
variety in the modes of dying, where death in some 
shape is inevitable, proposes a question of choice 
which, equally in the Roman and the Christian sense, 
will be variously answered according to each man's 
variety of temperament. Meantime, one aspect of 
sudden death there is, one modification, upon which 
no doubt can arise, that of all martyrdoms it is the 
most agitating — viz., where it surprises a man under 
circumstances which ofier (or which seem to offer) 
some hurrying, flying, inappreciably minute chance of 
evading it. Sudden as the danger which it affronts, 
must be any efibrt by which such an evasion can be 
accomplished. Even that, even the sickening necessi- 
ty for hurrying in extremity where all hurry seems 
destined to be vain, even that anguish is liable to a 
hideous exasperation in one particular case — viz., 



THE yiSION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 161 

where the appeal is made not exclusively to the in- 
stinct of self-preservation, but to the conscience, on 
behalf of some other life besides your own, accidentally 
thrown upon your protection. To fail, to collapse in 
a service merely your own, might seem comparatively 
venial ; though, in fact, it is far from venial. But to 
fail in a case where Providence has suddenly thrown into 
your hands the final interests of another — a fellow- 
creature shuddering between the gates of life and 
death ; this, to a man of apprehensive conscience, 
would mingle the misery of an atrocious criminality 
with the misery of a bloody calamity. You are called 
upon, by the case supposed, possibly to die ; but to die 
at the very moment when, by any even partial failure, 
or effeminate collapse of your energies, you will be 
self-denounced as a murderer. You had but the 
twinkling of an eye for your effort, and that effort 
might have been unavailing ; but to have risen to the 
level of such an effort, would have rescued you, 
though not from dying, yet from dying as a traitor 
to your final and farewell duty. 

The situation here contemplated exposes a dreadful 
ulcer, lurking far down in the depths of human nature. 
It is not that men generally are summoned to face 
such awful trials. But potentially, and in shadowy 
outline, such a trial is moving subterraneously in per- 
haps all men's natui-es. Upon the secret mirror of 
our dreams such a trial is darkly projected, perhaps, 
to every one of us. That dream, so familiar to child- 
hood, of meeting a lion, and, through languishing 
prostration in hope and the energies of hope, that 
constant sequel of lying do^vn before the lion, pub- 
lishes the secret frailty of human nature — reveals its 
14 



162 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

deep-seated falsehood to itself — records its abysmal 
treachery. Perhaps not one of ns escapes that dream ; 
perhaps, as by some sorrowful doom of man, that 
dream repeats for every one of us, through every 
generation, the original temptation in Eden. Every 
one of us, in this dream, has a bait oflFered to the 
infirm places of his own individual will ; once again 
a snare is presented for tempting him into captivity to 
a luxury of ruin ; once again, as in aboriginal Para- 
dise, the man falls by his own choice ; again, by 
infinite iteration, the ancient Earth groans to Heaven, 
through her secret caves, over the weakness of her 
child : ' Nature, from her seat, sighing through all her 
works,' again ' gives signs of wo that all is lost ; ' and 
again the counter sigh is repeated to the sorrowing 
heavens for the endless rebellion against God. It is 
not without probability that in the world of dreams 
every one of us ratifies for himself the original trans- 
gression. In dreams, perhaps under some secret 
conflict of the midnight sleeper, lighted up to the 
consciousness at the time, but darkened to the mem- 
ory as soon as all is finished, each several child of our 
mysterious race completes for himself the treason of 
the aboriginal fall. 

The incident, so memorable in itself by its features 
of horror, and so scenical by its grouping for the eye, 
which furnished the text for this reverie upon Sudden 
Death, occurred to myself in the dead of night, as a 
solitary spectator, when seated on the box of the 
Manchester and Glasgow mail, in the second or third 
summer after Waterloo. I find it necessary to relate 
the circumstances, because thej? are si^ch as could not 



THE VISIOX OF SUDDEN DEATH. 163 

have occurred unless under a singular combination of 
accidents. In those days, the oblique and lateral 
communications with many rural post-offices were so 
arranged, either through necessity or through defect 
of system, as to make it requisite for the main north- 
western mail (i. e., the doivn mail), on reaching Man- 
chester, to halt for a number of hours ; how many, I 
do not remember ; six or seven, I think ; but the 
result was, that, in the ordinary course, the mail 
recommenced its journey northwards about midnight. 
Wearied with the long detention at a gloomy hotel, 
I walked out about eleven o'clock at night for the 
Bake of fresh air ; meaning to fall in with the mail 
and resume my seat at the post-office. The night, 
however, being yet dark, as the moon had scarcely 
risen, and the streets being at that hour empty, so as to 
offer no opportunities for asking the road, I lost my 
way ; and did not reach the post-office until it was con- 
siderably past midnight ; but, to my great relief (as it 
was important for me to be in Westmoreland by the 
morning), I saw in the huge saucer eyes of the mail, 
blazing through the gloom, an evidence that my 
chance was not yet lost. Past the time it was, but, 
by some rare accident, the mail was not even yet 
ready to start. I ascended to my seat on the box, 
where my cloak was still lying as it had lain at the 
Bridge water Arms. I had left it there in imitation 
of a nautical discoverer, who leaves a bit of bunting 
on the shore of his discovery, by way of warning off 
the ground the whole human race, and notifying to 
the Christian and the heathen worlds, with his best 
compliments, that he has hoisted his pocket-handker- 
chief once and for ever upon that virgin soil ; thence« 



164 THE EJJTGLISH MAIIL-COACH. 

forward claiming the jus dominii to the top of the 
atmosphere above it, and also the right of driving 
shafts to the centre of the earth below it ; so that all* 
people found after this warning, either aloft in upper 
chambers of the atmosphere, or groping in subterrane- 
ous shafts, oj squatting audaciously on the surface of 
the soil, will be treated as trespassers — kicked, that is 
to say, or decapitated, as circumstances may suggest, by 
their very faithful servant, the owner of the said pocket- 
handkerchief. In the present case, it is probable that 
my cloak might not have been respected, and the jus 
gentium might have been cruelly violated in my person 
— for, in the dark, people commit deeds of darkness, 
gas being a great ally of morality — but it so hap- 
pened that, on this night, there was no other outside 
passenger ; and thus the crime, which else was but too 
probable, missed fire for want of a criminal. 

Having mounted the box, I took a small quantity of 
laudanum, having already travelled two hundred and 
fifty miles — viz., from a point seventy miles beyond 
London. In the taking of laudanum there was nothing 
extraordinary. But by accident it drew upon me the 
special attention of my assessor on the box, the coach- 
man. And in that also there was nothing extraordi- 
nary. But by accident, and with great delight, it 
drew my own attention to the fact that this coachman 
was a monster in point of bulk, and that he had but 
one eye. In fact, he had been foretold by Virgil as 

* Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens cui lumen ademptum.* 

He answered to the conditions in every one of the 
items : — 1, a monster he was ; 2, dreadful ; 3, shape- 
less ; 4, huge ; 5, who had lost an eye. But why 



THE VISION Of SUDDEN DEATH. 165 

fihould that delight me ? Had lie been one of tlie 
Calendars in the ' Ai-abian Nights,' and had paid 
down his eye as the price of his criminal curiosity, 
what right had I to exult in his misfortune ? I did 
not exult : I delighted in no man's punishment, though 
it were even merited. But these personal distinctions 
(Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) identified in an instant an old 
friend of mine, whom I had known in the south for 
some years as the most masterly of mail-coachmen. 
He was the man in all Europe that could (if any 
could) have driven six-in-hand full gallop over Al 
Sirat — that dreadful bridge of Mahomet, with no 
side battlements, and of extra room not enough for a 
razor's edge — leading right across the bottomless 
gulf. Under this eminent man, whom in Greek I 
cognominated Cyclops diphrelates (Cyclops the cha- 
rioteer), I, and others known to me, studied the 
diphrelatic art. Excuse, reader, a word too elegant 
to be pedantic. As a pupil, though I paid extra fees, 
it is to be lamented that I did not stand high in his 
esteem. It showed his dogged honesty (though, ob- 
serve, not his discernment), that he could not see my 
merits. Let us excuse his absurdity in this particular, 
by remem.bering his want of an eye. Doubtless that 
madt. nim blind to my merits. In the art of conversa- 
tion, however, he admitted that I had the whip-hand 
of him. On this present occasion, great joy was at 
our meeting. But what was Cyclops doing here? 
Had the medical men recommended northern air, or 
how ? I collected, from such explanations as he vol- 
unteered, that he had an interest at stake in some suit- 
at-law now pending at Lancaster ; so that probably he 
had got himself transferred to this station, for the pur- 



166 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

pose of connecting with his professional pursuits aa 
instant readiness for the calls of his lawsuit. 

Meantime, what are we stopping for.? Surely we 
have now waited long enough. Oh, this procrastina- 
ting mail, and this procrastinating post-office ! Can't 
they take a lesson upon that suhject from me 7 Some 
people have called me procrastinating. Yet you are 
witness, reader, that I was kept here waiting for the 
post-office. Will the post-office lay its hand on its 
heart, in its moments of sobriety, and assert that ever 
it waited for me ? What are they about ? The guard 
tells me that there is a large extra accumulation of 
foreign mails this night, owing to irregularities caused 
by war, by wind, by weather, in the packet service, 
which as yet does not benefit at all by steam. For au 
extra hour, it seems, the post-office has been engaged 
in threshing out the pure wheaten correspondence of 
Glasgow, and winnowing it from the chaff of all baser 
intermediate towns. But at last all is finished. Sound 
your horn, guard. Manchester, good-by ; we've lost 
an hour by your criminal conduct at the post-office : 
which, however, though I do not mean to part with a 
serviceable ground of complaint, and one which really 
is such for the horses, to me secretly is an advantage, 
since it compels us to look sharply for this lost hour 
amongst the next eight or nine, and to recover it (if 
we can) at the rate of one mile extra per hour. Off 
we are at last, and at eleven miles per hour : and for 
the moment I detect no changes in the energy or in 
the skill of Cyclops. 

From Manchester to Kendal, which virtually (though 
not in law) is the capital of Westmoreland, there were 
at this time seven stages of eleven miles each. The 



THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 167 

first five of these, counting from Manchester, terminate 
in Lancaster, wliich is therefore fifty-five miles north 
of Manchester, and the same distance exactly from 
Liverpool. The first three stages terminate in Preston 
(called, by way of distinction from other towns of that 
name, proud Preston), at which place it is that the 
separate roads from Liverpool and from Manchester to 
the north become confluent. •'^ Within these fi.rst three 
stages lay the foundation, the progress, and termina- 
tion of our night's adventure. During the first stage, 
I found out that Cyclops was mortal: he was liable to 
the shocking affection of sleep — a thing which pre- 
viously I had never suspected. If a man indulges in 
the vicious habit of sleeping, all the skill in aurigatiou 
of Apollo himself, with the horses of Aurora to exe- 
cute his notions, avail him nothing. ' Oh, Cyclops ! ' 
I exclaimed, 'thou art mortal. My friend, thou snor- 
est.' Through the first eleven miles, however, this 
infirmity — which I grieve to say that he shared with 
the whole Pagan Pantheon — betrayed itself only by 
brief snatches. On waking up, he made an apology 
for himself, which, instead of mending matters, laid 
open a gloomy vista of coming disasters. The sum- 
mer assizes, he reminded me, were now going on at 
Lancaster : in consequence of which, for three nights 
and three days, he had not lain down in a bed. Dur- 
ing the day, he was waiting for his own summons as a 
witness on the trial in which he was interested : or 
else, lest he should be missing at the critical moment, 
was drinking with the other witnesses, under the pas- 
toral surveillance of the attorneys. During the night, 
or that part of it which at sea would form the middle 
watch, he was driving. This explanation certainly 



168 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH, 

accounted for his drowsiness, but in a way wHcli made 
it much more alarming ; since now, after several days 
resistance to this infirmity, at length he was steadily 
giving way. Throughout the second stage he grew 
more and more drowsy. In the second mile of the 
third stage, he surrendered himself finally and without 
a struggle to his perilous temptation. All his past 
resistance had but deepened the weight of this final 
oppression. Seven atmospheres of sleep rested upon 
him ; and to consummate the case, our worthy guard, 
after singing ' Love amongst the Roses ' for perhaps 
thirty times, without invitation, and Avithout applause, 
had in revenge moodily resigned himself to slumber — ■ 
not so deep, doubtless, as the coachman's, but deep 
enough for mischief. And thus at last, about ten 
miles from Preston, it came about that I found myself 
left in charge of his Majesty's London and Glasgow 
mail, then running at the least twelve miles an hour. 

What made this negligence less criminal than else it 
must have been thought, was the condition of the 
roads at night during the assizes. At that time, all 
the law business of populous Liverpool, and also of 
populous Manchester, Avith its vast cincture of popu- 
lous rural districts, was called up by ancient usage to 
the tribunal of Lilliputian Lancaster. To break up 
this old traditional usage required, 1, a conflict with 
powerful established interests; 2, a large system of 
new arrangements ; and 3, a new parliamentary statute. 
But as yet this change was merely in contemplation. 
As things were at present, twice in the year ^^ so vast 
a body of business rolled northwards, from the south- 
ern quarter of the county, that for a fortnight at least 
it occupied the severe exertions of two judges in its 



THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 169 

despatch. The consequence of this was, that every 
horse available for such a service, along the whole line 
of road, was exhausted in carrying down the multitudes 
of people who were parties to the different suits. By 
sunset, therefore, it usually happened that, through 
utter exhaustion amongst men and horses, the roads 
sank into profound silence. Except the exhaustion in 
the vast adjacent county of York from a contested 
election, no such silence succeeding to no such fiery 
uproar was ever witnessed in England. 

On this occasion, the usual silence and solitude pre- 
vailed along the road. Not a hoof nor a wheel was to 
be heard. And to strengthen this false luxurious con- 
fidence in the noiseless roads, it happened also that 
the night was one of peculiar solemnity and peace. 
For my own part, though slightly alive to the possibil- 
ities of peril, I had so far yielded to the influence of 
the mighty calm as to sink into' a profound reverie. 
The month was August, in the middle of which lay 
my own birth-day — a festival to every thoughtful man 
suggesting solemn and often sigh-born ^^ thoughts. 
The county was my own native county — upon which, 
in its southern section, more than upon any equal area 
known to man past or present, had descended the 
original curse of labor in its heaviest form, not master- 
ing the bodies only of men as of slaves, or criminals in 
mines, but working through the fiery will. Upon no 
equal space of earth was, or ever had been, the same 
energy of human power put forth daily. At this par- 
ticular season also of the assizes, that dreadful hurri- 
cane of flight and pursuit, as it might have seemed to 
a stranger, which swept to and from Lancaster all day 
long, hunting the county up and down, and rcgulaiiy 
15 



170 THE ENGLISH MAIIj-COACH. 

subsiding back into silence about sunset, could not fail 
(when united with, tbis permanent distinction of Lan- 
casbire as tbe very metropolis and citidal of labor) to 
point tbe tbougbts patbetically upon tbat counter vis- 
ion of rest, of saintly repose from strife and sorrow, 
towards wbicb, as to tbeir secret baven, tbe profounder 
aspirations of man's beart are in solitude continually 
travelling. Obliquely upon our left we were nearing 
tbe sea, wbicb also must, under tbe present circum- 
stances, be repeating tbe general state of balcyon 
repose. Tbe sea, tbe atmospbere, tbe ligbt, bore eacb 
an orchestral part in tbis universal lull. Moonligbt, 
and tbe first timid tremblings of tbe dawn, were by 
tbis time blending ; and tbe blendings were brougbt 
into a still more exquisite state of imity by a sligbt 
silvery mist, motionless and dreamy, tbat covered tbe 
woods and fields, but with a veil of equable transpa- 
rency. Except tbe feet of our own borses, wbicb, 
running on a sandy margin of tbe road, made but little 
disturbance, tbere was no sound abroad. In tbe 
clouds, and on tbe eartb, prevailed tbe same majestic 
peace ; and in spite of all tbat tbe villain of a school- 
master bas done for tbe ruin of our sublimer tbougbts, 
wbicb are tbe tbougbts of our infancy, we still believe 
in no sucb nonsense as a limited atmospbere. What- 
ever we may swear with our false feigning lips, in our 
faithful hearts we still believe, and must for ever be- 
lieve, in fields of air traversing tbe total gulf between 
eartb and the central heavens. Still in the confidence 
of children tbat tread Avithout fear every chamber in 
their father's bouse, and to whom no door is closed, 
we, in that Sabbatic vision which sometimes is revealed 
for an hour upon nights like this, ascend with easy 



THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 171 

steps from the sorrow-stricken fields of earth, upwards 
to the sandals of God. 

Suddenly, froru thoughts like these, I was awakened 
10 a sullen sound, as of some motion on the distant 
road. It stole upon the air for a moment ; I listened 
in awe ; but then it died away. Once roused, how- 
ever, I could not but observe with alarm the quickened 
motion of our horses. Ten years' experience had 
made my eye learned in the valuing of motion ; and I 
saw that we were now running thirteen miles an hour. 
I pretend to no presence of mind. On the contrary, 
my fear is, that I am miserably and shamefully de- 
ficient in that quality as regards action. The palsy 
of doubt and distraction hangs like some guilty weight 
of dark unfathomed remembrances upon my energies, 
when the signal is flying for action. But, on the 
other hand, this accursed gift I have, as regards thougJit, 
that in the first step towards the possibility of a mis- 
fortune, I see its total evolution ; in the radix of the 
series I see too certainly and too instantly its entire 
expansion ; in the first syllable of the dreadful sen- 
tence, I read already the last. It was not that I feared 
for ourselves. Us, our bulk and impetus charmed 
against peril in any collision. And I had ridden 
through too many hundreds of perils that were fright- 
ful to approach, that were matter of laughter to look 
back upon, the first face of which was horror — the 
parting face a jest, for any anxiety to rest upon our 
interests. The mail was not built, I felt assured, noi 
bespoke, that could betray me who trusted to its pro- 
tection. But any carriage that we could meet would 
be frail and light in comparison of ourselves. And 
J remark this ominous accident of our situation. We 



172 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

were on the wrong side of tlie road. But then, it maj 
be said, the other party, if other there was, might also 
be on the Avror.g side ; and two wrongs might make a 
right. That was not likely. The same motive which 
had drawn us to the right-hand side of the road -^ 
viz., the luxury of the soft beaten sand, as contrasted 
with the paved centre — would prove attractive to 
others. The two adverse carriages would therefore, to 
a certainty, be travelling on the same side ; and from 
this side, as not being ours in law, the crossing over to 
the other Avould, of course, be looked for from usJ^ 
Our lamps, still lighted, would give the impression of 
vigilance on our part. And every creature that met 
us, would rely upon us for quartering .^i All this, and 
if the separate links of the anticipation had been a 
thousand times more, I saw, not discursively, or by 
effort, or by succession, but by one flash of horrid 
simultaneous intuition. 

Under this steady though rapid anticipation of the 
evil which might be gathering ahead, ah ! what a sul- 
len mystery of fear, what a sigh of wo, was that which 
stole upon the air, as again the far-off sound of a wheel 
was heard ? A whisper it was — a whisper from, 
perhaps, four miles off — secretly announcing a ruin 
that, being foreseen, was not the less inevitable ; that, 
being known, was not, therefore, healed. What could 
be done — who was it that could do it — to check the 
storm-flight of these maniacal horses ? Could I not 
seize the reins from the grasp of the slumbering coach- 
man ? You, reader, think that it would have been in 
your power to do so. And I quarrel not with your 
estimate of yourself. But, from the way in which the I 
coachman's hand was viced between his upper and 



THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 173 

»owcr thigh, this was impossible. Easy, was it ? See, 
then, that bronze equestrian statue. The cruel rider 
has kept the bit in his horse's mouth for two centu- 
ries. Unbridle him, for a minute, if you please, and 
wash his mouth with water. Easy, was it ? Unhorse 
me, then, that imperial rider ; knock me those marble 
feet from those marble stirrups of Charlemagne. 

The sounds ahead strengthened, and were now too 
clearly the sounds of wheels. Who and what could 
it be ? Was it industry in a taxed cart ? Was it 
youthful gayety in a gig ? Was it sorrow that loiter- 
ed, or joy that raced? For as yet the snatches of 
sound were too intermitting, from distance, to decipher 
the character of the motion. Whoever were the 
travellers, something must be done to warn them. 
Upon the other party rests the active responsibility, 
but upon lis — and, wo is me ! that us was reduced to 
my frail opium-shattered self — rests the responsibility 
of warning. Yet how should this be accomplished ? 
Might I not sound the guard's horn? Already, on 
the first thought, I was making my way over the roof 
to the guard's seat. But this, from the accident which 
I have mentioned, of the foreign mails' being piled 
upon the roof, was a difficult and even dangerous at- 
tempt to one cramped by nearly three hundred miles 
of outside travelling. And, fortunately, before I had 
lost much time in the attempt, our frantic horses swept 
round an angle of the road, which opened upon us 
that final stage where the collision must be accom- 
plished, and the catastrophe sealed. All was appar- 
ently finished. The court was sitting ; the case was 
heard; the judge had finished; and the only verdict 
was yet in arrear. 



IH THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

Before us lay an avenue, straight as an arrow, sue 
hundred yards, perhaps, in length ; and the umbrageous 
trees, which rose in a regular line from either side, 
meeting high overhead, gave to it the character of a 
cathedral aisle. These trees lent a deeper solemnity 
to the early light ; but there was still light enough to 
perceive, at the further end of this Gothic aisle, a frail 
reedy gig, in which were seated a young man, and by 
his side a young lady. Ah, young sir ! what are you 
about ? If it is requisite that you should whisper your 
communications to this young lady — though really I 
see nobody, at an hour and on a road so solitary, likely 
to overhear you — is it therefore requisite that you 
should carry your lips forward to hers ? The little 
carriage is creeping on at one mile an hour ; and the 
parties within it being thus tenderly engaged, are 
naturally bending down their heads. Between them 
and eternity, to all human calculation, there is but a 
minute and a-half. Oh heavens ! what is it that I 
shall do ? Speaking or acting, what help can I offer ? 
Strange it is, and to a mere auditor of the tale might 
seem laughable, that I should need a suggestion from 
the ' Iliad ' to prompt the sole resource that remained. 
Yet so it was. Suddenly I remembered the shout of 
Achilles, and its effect. But could I pretend to shout 
like the son of Peleus, aided by Pallas ? No : but 
then I needed not the shout that should alarm all Asia 
militant ; such a shout would suffice as might carry 
terror into the hearts of two thoughtless young peo- 
ple, and one gig horse. I shouted — and the young 
man heard me not. A second time I shouted — and 
now he heard me, for now he raised his head. 

Here, then, all had been done that, by me, could bo 



THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 175 

(lone : more on my part was not possible. Mine had 
been the first step ; the second was for the young 
man ; the third Avas for God. If, said I, this stranger 
is a brave man, and if, indeed, he loves the young girl 
at his side — or, loving her not, if he feels the obliga- 
tion, pressing upon every man worthy to be called a 
man, of doing his utmost for a woman confided to his 
protection — he will, at least, make some eff"ort to 
save her. If that fails, he will not perish the more, or 
by a death more cruel, for having made it ; and he will 
die as a brave man should, with his face to the dan- 
ger, and with his arm about the woman that he sought 
in vain to save. But, if he makes no effort, shrinking, 
without a struggle, from his duty, he himself will not 
the less certainly perish for this baseness of poltroon- 
ery. He will die no less : and why not ? Wherefore 
should we grieve that there is one craven less in the 
world ? No ; let him perish, without a pitying thought 
of ours wasted upon him ; and, in that case, all our 
grief will be reserved for the fate of the helpless girl 
who now, upon the least shadow of failure in /tim, 
must, by the fiercest of translations — must, without 
time for a prayer — must, within seventy seconds, 
stand before the judgment-seat of God. 

But craven he was not : sudden had been the call 
upon him, and sudden was his answer to the call. 
He saw, he heard, he comprehended, the ruin that 
was coming down : already its gloomy shadow dark- 
ened above him ; and already he was measuring his 
strength to deal with it. Ah ! what a vulgar thing 
does courage seem, when we see nations buying it and 
Belling it for a shilling a-day : ah ! what a sublime 
thing does courage seem, when some fearful summons 



176 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

on the great deeps of life carries a man, as if runmng 
before a hurricane, np to the giddy crest of some 
tumultuous crisis, from which lie two courses, and a 
voice says to him audibly, ' One way lies hope ; take 
the other, and mourn for ever ! ' How grand a 
triumph, if, even then, amidst the raving of all around 
him, and the frenzy of the danger, the man is able 
to confront his situation — is able to retire for a 
moment into solitude with God, and to seek hia 
counsel from him ! 

For seven seconds, it might be, of his seventy, the 
stranger settled his countenance steadfastly upon us, 
as if to search and value every element in the conflict 
before him. For five seconds more of his seventy he 
sat immovably, like one that mused on some great 
purpose. For five more, perhaps, he sat with eyes 
upraised, like one that prayed in sorrow, under some 
extremity of doubt, for ligbt that should guide him to 
the better choice. Then suddenly he rose ; stood 
upright; and by a powerful strain upon the reins, 
raising his horse's fore-feet from the ground, he 
slewed him round on the pivot of his hind-legs, so 
as to plant the little equipage in a position nearly at 
right angles to ours. Thus far his condition was not 
improved, except as a first step had been taken to- 
wards the possibility of a" second. If no more were 
done, nothing Avas done ; for the little carriage still 
occupied the very centre of our path, though in an 
altered direction. Yet even now it may not be too 
late : fifteen of the seventy seconds may still be unex- 
hausted; and one almighty bound may avail to clear 
the ground. Hurry, then, hurry ! for the flying mo- 
meute — they hurry! Oh, hurry, hurry, my brave 



THE YISION OF SUDDEN DEA.TH. 177 

young man ! for the cruel hoofs of our horses — they 
also hurry ! Fast are the flying moments, faster are the 
hoofs of our horses. But fear not for him, if human 
energy can suffice ; faithful was he that drove to his 
terrific duty ; faithful was the horse to his command. 
One blow, one impulse given Avith voice and hand, 
by the stranger, one rush from the horse, one bound 
as if in the act of rising to a fence, landed the docile 
creature's fore-feet upon the crown or arching centre 
of the road. The larger half of the little equipage 
had then cleared our overtowering shadow : that was 
evident even to my own agitated sight. But it mat- 
tered little that one wreck should float oS" in safety, 
if upon the wreck that perished were embarked the 
human freightage. The rear part of the carriage — 
was that certainly beyond the line of absolute ruin? 
"What power could answer the question ? Glance of 
eye, thought of man, wing of angel, Avhich of these 
had speed enough to sweep between the question and 
the answer, and divide the one from the other ? 
Light does not tread upon the steps of light more 
indivisibly, than did our all-conquering arrival upon 
the escaping efforts of the gig. That must the young 
man have felt too plainly. His back was now turned 
to us ; not by sight could he any longer communicate 
with the peril ; but by the dreadful rattle of our 
harness, too truly had his ear been instructed — that 
all was finished as regarded any further effort of his. 
Already in resignation he had rested from his struggle ; 
and perhaps in his heart he was whispering, ' Father, 
which art in heaven, do thou finish above what I on 
earth have attempted.' Faster than ever mill-race we 
ran past them in our inexorable flight. Oh, raving of 



178 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

hurricanes that must have sounded in their young ears 
at the moment of our transit ! Even in that moment 
the thunder of collision spoke aloud. Either with the 
swingle-bar, or with the haunch of our near leader, we 
had struck the oflf-wheel of the little gig, which stood 
rather obliquely, and not quite so far advanced, as to 
be accurately parallel with the near- wheel. The blow, 
from the fury of our passage, resounded terrifically. 
I rose in horror, to gaze upon the ruins we might have 
caused. From my elevated station I looked down, 
and looked back upon the scene, which in a moment 
told its own tale, and wrote all its records on my heart 
for ever. 

Here was the map of the passion that now had 
finished. The horse was planted immovably, with hia 
fore-feet upon the paved crest of the central road. 
He of the whole party might be supposed untouched 
by the passion of death. The little cany carriage — 
partly, perhaps, from the violent torsion of the wheels 
in its recent movement, partly from the thundering 
blow we had given to it — as if it sympathized with 
human horror, was all alive with tremblings and shiv- 
erings. The young man trembled not, nor shivered. 
He sat like a rock. But his was the steadiness of 
agitation frozen into rest by horror. As yet he dared 
not to look round ; for he knew that, if anything 
remained to do, by him it could no longer be done. 
And as yet he knew not for certain if their safety 
•were accomplished. But the lady 

But the lady ! Oh, heavens ! will that spectacle 

ever depart from my dreams, as she rose and sank 
upon her seat, sank and rose, threw up her arms wildly 
to heaven, clutched at some visionary object in the air. 



THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 179 

fainting, praying, raving, despairing ? Figure to your- 
self, reader, the elements of the case ; suffer me to 
recall before your mind the circumstances of that 
unparalleled situation. From the silence and deep 
peace of this saintly summer night — from the pa- 
thetic blending of this sweet moonlight, dawnlight, 
dreamlight — from the manly tenderness of this flat- 
tering, ^^'i^ispering, murmuring love — suddenly as 
from the woods and fields — suddenly as from the 
chambers of the ak opening in revelation — suddenly 
as from the ground yawning at her feet, leaped upon 
her, with the flashing of cataracts, Death the crowned 
phantom, with all the equipage of his terrors, and the 
tiger roar of his voice. 

The moments were numbered ; the strife was fin- 
ished ; the vision was closed. In the twinkling of an 
eye, our flying horses had carried us to the termina- 
tion of the umbrageous aisle ; at right angles we 
wheeled into our former dii-ection ; the turn of tne 
road carried the scene out of my eyes in an instant, 
ftnd swept it into my dreams for ever. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

SECTION THE THIRD. -^ DREAM-FUGUE. 

FOUNDED ON THE PRECSEDINQ THEIVIE OF SUDDEN DEATH 

' Whence the sound 
Of instruments, that made melodious chime, 
Was heard, of harp and organ ; and who moved 
Their stops and chords, was seen ; his volant touch 
Instinct through all proportions, low and high. 
Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue.' 

Par. Lost, B jd. 

Tumultuosissimamente . 

Passion of sudden death ! that once in youth I read 
and interpreted by the shadows of thy averted signs ! 29 

— rapture of panic taking the shape (which amongst 
tombs in churches I have seen) of woman bursting 
her sepulchral bonds — of woman's Ionic form bend- 
ing from the ruins of her grave with arching foot, with 
eyes upraised, with clasped adoring hands — waiting, 
watching, trembling, praying for the trumpet's call to 
rise from dust for ever ! Ah, vision too fearful of 
shuddering humanity on the brink of almighty abysses I 

— vision that didst start back, that didst reel away, 
like a shrivelling scroll from before the wrath of fire 
racing on the wings of the wind ! Epilepsy so brief 
of horror, wherefore is it that thou canst not die ? 
Passing so suddenly into darkness, wherefore is it that 
still thou sheddest thy sad funeral blights upon the 
gorgeous mosaics of dreams ? Fragment of music too 

[180] 



DEEAM-FTTGTIE. 181 

passionate, heard once, and heard no more, what aileth 
thee, that thy deep rolling chords come up at intervals 
through all the worlds of sleep, and after forty years, 
have lost no element of horror ? 

I. 

Lo, it is summer — almighty summer ! The ever- 
lasting gates of life and summer are thrown open wide , 
and on the ocean, tranquil and verdant as a savannah, 
the unknown lady from the dreadful vision and I my- 
self are floating — she upon a fiery pinnace, and I upon 
an English three-decker. Both of us are wooing gales 
of festal happiness within the domain of our common 
country, within that ancient watery park, within that 
pathless chase of ocean, where England takes her 
pleasure as a huntress through winter and summer, 
from the rising to the setting sun. Ah, what a wilder- 
ness of floral beauty was hidden, or was suddenly re- 
vealed, upon the tropic islands through which the 
pinnace moved ! And upon her deck what a bevy of 
human flowers — young women how lovely, young 
men how noble, that were dancing together, and 
slowly drifting towards us amidst music and incense, 
amidst blossoms from forests and gorgeous corymbi 
from vintages, amidst natural carolling and the echoes 
of sweet girlish laughter. Slowly the pinnace nears 
MS, gaily she hails us, and silently she disappears be- 
neath the shadow of our mighty bows. But then, as 
at some signal from heaven, the music, and the care Is, 
and the sweet echoing of girlish laughter — all are 
hushed. What evil has smitten the pinnace, meeting 
or overtaking her ? Did ruin to our friends couch 
within our own dreadful shadow ? Was our shaduW 



182 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

the shadow of death ? I looked over the boAV for an 
answer, and, behold ! the pinnace was dismantled ; 
the revel and the revellers were found no more ; the 
glory of the vintage was dust ; and the forests with 
their beauty Avere left without a witness upon the 
seas. ' But where,' and I turned to our crew — 
' where are the lovely women that danced beneath 
the awning of flowers and clustering corymbi ! Whither 
have fled the noble young men that danced with 
them 7 ' Answer there was none. But suddenly the 
man at the masthead, whose countenance darkened 
with alarm, cried out, ' Sail on the weather beam ! 
Down she comes upon us : in seventy seconds she 
also will founder.' 

n. 

1 looked to the weather side, and the summer had 
departed. The sea was rocking, and shaken with 
gathering wrath. Upon its surface sat mighty mists, 
which grouped themselves into arches and long cathe- 
dral aisles. Down one of these, with the fiery pace of 
a quarrel from a cross-bow, ran a frigate right athwart 
our course. ' Ai'e they mad ? ' some voice exclaimed 
from our deck. ' Do they woo their ruin ? ' But in 
a moment, she was close upon us, some impulse of a, 
heady current or local vortex gave a wheeling bias to] 
her course, and ofi" she forged without a shock. As] 
sh3 ran past us, high aloft amongst the shrouds stood! 
the lady of the pinnace. The deeps opened ahead inl 
malice to receive her, towering surges of foam ran after" 
her, the billows were fierce to catch her. But far 
away she was borne into desert spaces of the sea : 
whilst stUl by sight I followed her as she ran before 



DKEAM-FtlGUE. 183 

the howling gale, chased by angry sea-birds and by 
maddening billows ; still I saw her, as at the moment 
when she ran past us, standing amongst the shrouds, 
with her white draperies streaming before the wind. 
There she stood, with hair dishevelled, one hand 
clutched amongst the tackling — rising, sinking, flut- 
tering, trembling, praying — there for leagues I saw 
her as she stood, raising at intervals one hand to 
heaven, amidst the fiery crests of the pursuing waves 
and the raving of the storm ; until at last, upon a 
sound from afar of malicious laughter and mockery, all 
was hidden for ever in driving showers ; and after- 
wards, but when I know not, nor how. 

m. 

Sweet funeral bells from some incalculable distance, 
wailing over the dead that die before the dawn, awak- 
ened me as I slept in a boat moored to some familiar 
shore. The morning twilight even then was breaking ; 
and, by the dusky revelations which it spread, I saw a 
girl, adorned with a garland of white roses about her 
head for some great festival, running along the solitary 
strand in extremity of haste. Her running was the 
running of panic ; and often she looked back as to 
some dreadful enemy in the rear. But when I leaped 
ashore, and followed on her steps to warn her of a peril 
in front, alas ! from me she fled as from another peril, 
and vainly I shouted to her of quicksands that lay 
ahead. Faster and faster she ran ; round a promon- 
tory of rocks she wheeled out of sight ; in an instant I 
also wheeled round it, but only to see the treacherous 
sands gathering above her head. Already her person 
was buried ; only the fair young head and the diadem 



184 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

of white roses around it were still visible to the pity- 
ing heavens : and, last of all, was visible one white 
marble arm. I saw by the early twilight this fair 
young head, as it was sinking down to darkness • — saw 
this marble arm, as it rose above her head and her 
treacherous grave, tossing, faltering, rising, clutching 
as at some false deceiving hand stretched out from the 
clouds — saw this marble arm uttering her dying hope, 
and then uttering her dying despair. The head, the 
diadem, the arm — these all had sunk ; at last over 
these also the cruel quicksand had closed ; and no 
memorial of the fair young girl remained on earth, 
except my own solitary tears, and the funeral bells 
from the desert seas, that, rising again more softly, 
sang a requiem over the grave of the buried child, and 
over her blighted dawn. 

I sat, and wept in secret the tears that men have 
ever given to the memory of those that died before 
the dawn, and by the treachery of earth, our mother. 
But suddenly the tears and funeral bells were hushed 
by a shout as of many nations, and by a roar as from 
some great king's artillery, advancing rapidly along 
the valleys, and heard afar by echoes from the moun- 
tains. ' Hush ! ' I said, as I bent my ear earthwards 
to listen — ' nush ! — this either is the very anarchy 
of strife, or eise ' — and then I listened more pro- 
foundly, and »vhispered as I raised my head — ' or 
else, oh heavens ! it is victory that is final, victory that 
swallows up all strife.' 

IV. '^ 

Immediately, in trance, I was carried over land and 
sea to some distant kingdom, and placed upon a tri- 



DBEAM-FUGUE. 185 

umplial car, amongst companions crowned with laurel. 
The darkness of gathering midnight, brooding over all 
the land, hid from us the mighty crowds that were 
weaving restlessly about ourselves as a centre : we 
heard them, but saw them not. Tidings had arrived, 
within an hour, of a grandeur that measured itself 
against centuries ; too full of pathos they were, too 
full of joy, to utter themselves by other language than 
by tears, by restless anthems, and Te Beums reverbe- 
rated from the choirs and orchestras of earth. Thesa 
tidings we that sat upon the laurelled car had it for 
our privilege to publish amongst all nations. And 
already, by signs audible through the darkness, by 
snortings and tramplings, our angry horses, that knew 
no fear of fleshy weariness, upbraided us with delay. 
Wherefore was it that we delayed ? We waited for a 
secret word that should bear Avitness to the hope of 
nations, as now accomplished for ever. At midnight 
the secret word arrived ; which word was — Waterloo 
and Recovered Christendom ! The dreadful word 
shone by its own light ; before us it went; high above 
our leaders' heads it rode, and spread a golden light 
over the paths which we traversed. Every city, at the 
presence of the secret word, threw open its gates. The 
rivers were conscious as we crossed. All the forests, 
as we ran along their margins, shivered in homage to 
the secret word. And the darkness comprehended it. 

Two hours after midnight we approached a mighty 
Minster. Its gates, which rose to the clouds, were 
clcsed. But when the dreadful word, that rode before 
us, reached them with its golden light, silently they 
moved back upon their hinges ; and at a flying gallop 
our equipage entered the grand aisle of the cathedral. 
16 



186 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

Headlong was our pace ; and at every altar, in the 
little chapels and oratories to the right hand and left 
of our course, the lamps, dying or sickening, kindled 
anew in s}Tnpathy with the secret word that was fly- 
ing past. Forty leagues we might have run in the 
cathedral, and as yet no strength of morning light had 
reached us, when before us we saw the aerial galleries 
of organ and choir. Every pinnacle of the fretwork, 
every station of advantage amongst the traceries, was 
crested by white-robed choristers, that sang deliver- 
ance ; that wept no more tears, as once their fathers 
had wept ; but at intervals that sang together to the 
generations, saying, 

' Chant the deliverer's praise in erery tongue,' 
and receiving answers from afar, 

' Such as once in heaven and earth were sung.' 

And of their chanting was no end ; of our headlong 
pace was neither pause nor slackening. 

Thus, as we ran like torrents — thus, as we swept 
with bridal rapture over the Campo Santo ^3 of the 
cathedral graves — suddenly we became aware of a 
vast necropolis rising upon the far-off horizon — a city 
of sepulchres, built within the saintly cathedral for the 
warrior dead that rested from their feuds on earth. 
Of purple granite was the necropolis ; yet, in the first 
minute, it lay like a purple stain upon the horizon, so 
mighty was the distance. In the second minute it 
trembled through many changes, growing into terraces 
and towers of wondrous altitude, so mighty was the 
pace. In the third minute already, with our dreadful 
gallop, we were entering its suburbs. Vast sarcophagi 
rose on every side, having towers and turrets that, 
upon the limits of the central aisle, strode forward 



DEEAM-FUGUE. 187 

witli hauglity intrusion, that ran back with mighty 
shadows into answering recesses. Every scarcophagua 
showed many bas-reliefs — bas-reliefs of battles and 
of battle-fields ; battles from forgotten ages — battles 
from yesterday — battle-fields that, long since, nature 
had healed and reconciled to herself with the sweet 
oblivion of flowers — battle-fields that were yet angry 
and crimson with carnage. "Where the terraces ran, 
there did loe run ; where the towers curved, there did 
toe curve. With the flight of swallows our horses 
swept round every angle. Like rivers in flood, wheel- 
ing round headlands — like hurricanes that ride into 
the secrets of forests — faster than ever light unwove 
the mazes of darkness, our flying equipage carried 
earthly passions, kindled warrior instincts, amongst 
the dust that lay around us — dust oftentimes of oiu* 
noble fathers that had slept in God from Creci to Tra- 
falgar. And now had we reached the last sarcophagus, 
now were we abreast of the last bas-relief, already had 
we r'^covered the arrow-like flight of the illimitable 
central aisle, when coming up this aisle to meet us we 
beheld afar ofi" a female child, that rode in a carriage 
as frail as flowers. The mists, which went before her, 
hid the fawns that drew her, but could not hide the 
shells and tropic flowers with which she played — but 
could not hide the lovely smiles by which she uttered 
her trust in the mighty cathedral, and in the cherubim 
that looked down upon her from the mighty shafts of 
its pillars. Face to face she was meeting us ; face to 
face she rode, as if danger there were none. ' Oh, 
baby ! ' I exclaimed, ' shalt thou be the ransom for 
"Waterloo ? Must we, that carry tidings of great joy 
to every people, be messengers of ruin to thee ! ' In 



188 TUB ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

horror I rose at tlie thought ; but then also, in horroi 
at the thought, rose one that was sculptured on a bas- 
relief — a Dying Trumpeter. Solemnly from the field 
of battle he rose to his feet ; and, unslinging his stony 
trumpet, carried it, in his dying anguish, to his stony 
lips — sounding once, and yet once again ; proclama- 
tion that, in thy ears, oh baby ! spoke from the battle- 
ments of death. Immediately deep shadows fell 
between us, and aboriginal silence. The choir had 
ceased to sing. The hoofs of our horses, the dreadful 
rattle of our harness, the groaning of our wheels, 
alarmed the graves no more. By horror the bas-relief 
had been unlocked into life. By horror we, that were 
so full of life, we men and our horses, with their fiery 
fore-legs rising in mid air to their everlasting galloj), 
were frozen to a bas-relief. Then a third time the 
trumpet sounded ; the seals were taken off" all pulses ; 
life, and the frenzy of life, tore into their channels 
again ; again the choir burst forth in sunny grandeur, 
as from the muffling of storms and darkness ; again 
the thunderings of our horses carried temptation into • 
the graves. One cry burst from our lips, as the clouds, 
drawing ofi" from the aisle, showed it empty before us 
— ' Whither has the infant fled ? — is the young child 
caught up to God ? ' Lo ! afar ofi", in a vast recess, 
rose three mighty windows to the clouds ; and on a 
level with their summits, at height insuperable to man, 
rose an altar of purest alabaster. On its eastern face 
was trembling a crimson glory. A glory was it from 
the reddening dawn that now streamed through the 
windows ? Was it from the crimson robes of the 
martyrs painted on the windows? Was it from the 
bloody bas-reliefs of earth ? There, suddenly, within 



DBEAM-rUGUB. 189 

that crimson radiance, rose the apparition of a woman's 
head, and then of a woman's figiu-e. The child it was 
— grown up to woman's height. Clinging to the 
horns of the altar, voiceless she stood — sinking, ris- 
ing, raving, despairing ; and behind the volume of in- 
cense, that, night and day, streamed upwards from the 
altar, dimly was seen the fiery font, and the shadow 
of that dreadful being who should have baptized her 
with the baptism of death. But by her side was 
kneeling her better angel, that hid his face with wings ; 
that wept and pleaded for her ; that prayed when she 
could not ; that fought with Heaven by tears for her 
deliverance ; which also, as he raised his immortal 
countenance from his wings, I saw, by the glory in his 
eye, that from Heaven he had won at last. 



Then was completed the passion of the mighty 
fugue. The golden tubes of the organ, which as yet had 
but muttered at intervals — gleaming amongst clouds 
and surges of incense — threw up, as from fountains 
unfathomable, columns of heart-shattering music. 
Choir and anti-choir were filling fast with imknown 
voices. Thou also, Dying Trumpeter! — with thy 
love that was victorious, and thy anguish that was 
finishing — didst enter the tumult ; trumpet and echo 
— farewell love, and farewell anguish — rang through 
the dreadful sanctus. Oh, darkness of the grave ! 
that from the crimson altar and from the fiery font 
wert visited and searched by the effulgence in the 
angel's eye — were these indeed thy children? Pomps 
of life, that, from the burials of centuries, rose again 
to Ihe voice of perfect joy, did ye indeed mingle vath 



190 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 

the festivals of Death ? Lo ! as I looked back for 
seventy leagues through the mighty cathedral, I saw 
the quick and the dead that sang together to God, 
together that sang to the generations of man. All 
the hosts of jubilation, like armies that ride in pur- 
suit, moved with one step. Us, that, with laurelled 
heads, were passing from the cathedral, they overtook, 
and, as with a garment, they wrapped us round with 
thunders greater than our own. As brothers we moved 
together ; to the dawn that advanced — to the stars 
that fled; rendering thanks to God in the highest — 
that, having hid his face through one generation be- 
hind thick clouds of War, once again was ascending — 
from the Campo Santo of Waterloo was ascending — 
in the visions of Peace ; rendering thanks for thee, 
young girl ! whom, having overshadowed Avith his in- 
efiable passion of death, suddenly did God relent ; 
sufi'ered thy angel to turn aside his arm ; and even iu 
thee, sister unknown ! shown to me for a moment only 
to be hidden for ever, found an occasion to glorify his 
goodness. A thousand times, amongst the phantoms 
of sleep, have I seen thee entering the gates of the 
golden dawn — with the secret word riding before 
thee — with the armies of the grave behind thee : 
seen thee sinking, rising, raving, despairing ; a thou- 
sand times in the worlds of sleep have seen thee fol- 
lowed by God's angel through storms ; through desert 
seas; through the darkness of quicksands; through 
dreams, and the di-eadful revelations that are in dreams 
— only that at the last, with one sling of his victorious 
arm, he might snatch thee back from ruin, and might 
emblazon in thy deliverance the endless resurrections 
of his love ! 



4 



NOTES. 

Note 1. Page 125. 
Lady Madeline Grordon. 

Note 2. Page 125. 

* The same thing : ' — Thus, in the calendar of the Church Fes- 
tiTals, the discovery of the true cross (by Helen, the mother of 
Constantino) is recorded (and one might think — with the ex- 
press consciousness of sarcasm) as the Invention of the Cross. 

Note 3. Page 125. 
' Vast distances : ' — One case was familiar to mail-coach trav- 
ellers, where two mails in opposite directions, north and south, 
starting at the same minute from points sis hundred miles apart, 
met almost constantly at a particular bridge which bisected the 
total distance. 

Note 4. Page 129. 
De non apparentibus, S^c. 

Note 5. Page 129. 

♦ Snobs,' and its antithesis, • nobs,' arose among the internal 
factions of shoemakers perhaps ten years later. Possibly enough, 
the terms may have existed much earlier; but they were then 
first made known, picturesquely and effectively, by a trial at 
Bome assizes which happened to fix the public attention. 

Note 6. Page 134. 

• Von Troil's Iceland : ' — The allusion to a well-known chap- 
ter in Von Troil's work, entitled, • Concerning the Snakes of 

[191] 



192 NOTES. 

Iceland.' The entire chapter consists of these six words — • Thert 
Are no snakes in Iceland.' 

Note 7. Page 134. 
' Forbidden seat: ' — The very sternest code of rules was en- 
fbrced upon the mails by the Post-office. Throughout England, 
only three outsides were allowed, of whom one was to sit on the 
box, and the other two immediately behind the box; none, under 
any pretext, to come near the guard; an indispensable caution; 
since else, under the guise of passenger, a robber might by any 
one of a thousand advantages — which sometimes are created, but 
always are favored, by the animation of frank, social intercourse 
— have disarmed the guard. Beyond the Scottish border, the 
regulation was so far relaxed as to allow of four outsides, but not 
relaxed at all as to the mode of placing them. One, as before, 
was aeated on the box, and the other three on the front of the 
roof, with a determinate and ample separation from the little 
insulated chair of the guard. This relaxation was conceded by 
way of compensating to Scotland her disadvantages in point of 
population. England, by the svxperior density of her popula- 
tion, might always count upon a large fund of profits in the frac- 
tional trijjs of chance passengers riding for short distances of two 
or three stages. In Scotland, this chance counted for much less. 
And therefore, to make good the deficiency, Scotland was allowed 
a compensatory profit upon one extra passenger. 

Note 8. Page 136. 
' False echoes : ' — Yes, false! for the words ascribed to Napo- 
leon, as breathed to the memory of Desaix, never were uttered at 
aE. They stand in the same category of theatrical fictions as the 
cry of the foundering line-of-battle ship Vengeur, as the vaunt 
of General Cambronne at Waterloo, ' La Garde meurt, inais ne 
se rend pas,' or as the repartees of Talleyrand. 

Note 9. Page 142. 

• Wore the royal livery : ' — The general impression was, that 

the royal livery belonged of right to the mail-coachmen as their 

professional dress. But that was an error. To the guard it did 

belong, I believe, and was obviously essential as an official war- 



NOTES. 193 

rant, and as a means of instant identification for his person, in 
the discharge of his important public duties. But the coachman, 
and especially if his place in the series did not connect him im- 
mediately with London and the General Post-oflBce, obtained the 
Bcarlet coat only as an honorary distinction after long (or, if not 
long, trying and special) service 

Note 10. Page 144. 

* Turrets ; ' — As one who loves and venerates Chaucer for his 
unrivalled merits of tenderness, of picturesque characterization, 
and of narrative skill, I noticed with great pleasure that the 
word torrcttcs is used by him to designate the little devices 
through which the reins are made to pass. This same word, in 
the same exact sense, I heard uniformly used by many scores of 
illustrious mail-coachmen, to whose confidential friendship I had 
the honor of being admitted in my younger days. 

Note 11. Page 145. 

* Mr. Waterton : ' — Had the reader lived through the last 
generation, he would not need to be told that some thirty or 
thirty-five years back, Mr. Waterton, a distinguished country gen- 
tleman of ancient family in Northumberland, publicly mounted 
and rode in top-boots a savage old crocodile, that was restive and 
very impertinent, but all to no purpose. The crocodile jibbed 
and tried to kick, but vainly. He was no more able to throw the 
squire, than Sinbad was to throw the old scoundrel who used hia 
back without paying for it, until he discovered a mode (slightly 
immoral, perhaps, though some think not) of murdering the old 
fraudulent jockey, and so circuitously of unhorsing him. 

Note 12. Page 146. 

* Households : ' — Roe-deer do not congregate in herds like the 
fellow or the red deer, but by separate families, pai'ents and 
children; which feature of approximation to the sanctity of 
human hearths, added to their comparatively miniature and 
graceful proportions, conciliate to them an interest of peculiar 
tenderness, supposmg even that this beautiful creature is less 
characteristically impressed with the grandeurs of savage and 
£>reet life. 

17 



194 notes- 



Note 13. Page 148. 

* Audacity:' — Such tlie French accounted it; and it has 
struck me that Soult would not have been so popular in London . 
at the period of her present Majesty's coronation, or in Man- 
chester, on occasion of his visit to that town, if they had been 
aware of the insolence with which he spoke of us in notes written 
at intervals from the field of Waterloo. As though it had been 
mere felony in our army to look a French one in the face, he said 
in more notes than one, dated from two to four p. m., on the fieM 
of Waterloo, ' Here are the English — we have them ; they are 
caught €71 flagrant delit..' Yet no man should have known ua 
better; no man had drunk deeper from the cup of humiliation 
than Soult had in 1809, when ejected by us with headlong vio- 
lence from Oporto, and pursued through a long line of wrecks to 
the frontier of Spain ; subsequently at Albuera, in the bloodldst 
of recorded battles, to say nothing of Toulouse, he should have 
learned our pretensions. 

Note 14. Page 148. 

♦ At that time : ' — I speak of the era previous to Waterloo. 

Note 15. Page 150. 
' Three hundred :' — Of necessity, this scale of measurement, 
to an American, if he happens to be a thoughtless man, must 
Bound ludicrous. Accordingly, I remember a case in which an 
American writer indulges himself in the luxury of a little fibbing, 
by ascribing to an Englishman a pompous account of the Thames, 
constructed entirely upon American ideas of grandeur, and con- 
cluding in something like these terms : — ' And, sir, arriving at 
London, this mighty father of rivers attains a breadth of at least 
two furlongs, having, in its winding course, traversed the aston- 
ishing distance of one hundred and seventy miles.' And this the 
candid American thinks it fair to contrast with the scale of the 
Mississippi. Now, it is hardly worth while to answer a pure 
fiction gravely, else one might say that no Englishman out of 
Bedlam ever thought of looking in an island for the rivers of a 
continent; nor, consequently could have thought of looking for 
the peculiar grandeur of the Thames in the length of its course 



NOTES. 195 

or in the extent of soil which it drains; yet, if he had been so 
absurd, the American might have recollected that a river, not to 
bo compared with the Thames even as to volume of water — viz , 
the Tiber — has contrived to make itself heard of in this world 
for twenty-five centuries to an extent not reached as yet by any 
river, however corpulent, of his own land. The glory of the 
Thames is measured by the destiny of the population to which it 
ministers, by the commerce wliich it supports, by the grandeur 
of the empire in which, though far from the largest, it is the most 
influential stream. Upon some such scale, and not by a transfer 
of Columbian standards, is the course of our English mails to be 
•valued. The American may fancy the effect of his own valua- 
tions to our English ears, by supposing the case of a Siberian 
glorifying his country in these terms : — ' These wretches, sir, in 
France and England, cannot march half a mile in any direction 
"without finding a house where food can be had and lodging; 
■whereas, such is the noble desolation of our magnificent country, 
that in many a direction for a thousand miles, I will engage that 
a dog shall not find shelter from a snow-storm, nor a wren find 
an apology for breakfast.' 

Note 16. Page 154. 
* Glittering laurels : ' — I must observe, that the color of 
green suffers almost a spiritual change and exaltation under the 
effect of Bengal lights. 

Note 17. Page 167. 
' Confluent: ' — Suppose a capital Y (the Pythagorean letter) : 
Lancaster is at the foot of this letter ; Liverpool at the top of the 
right branch ; Manchester at the top of the left ; proud Preston 
at the centre, where the two branches unite. It is thirty-three 
miles along either of the two branches; it is twenty-two milea 
along the stem — viz., from Preston in the middle, to Lancaster 
at the root. There's a lesson in geography for the reader. 

Note 18. Page 168. 
' Twice ill the year : ' — There were at that time only two as- 
sizes even in tlie most populous counties — viz., the Lent Assizes, 
and the Summer Assizes. 



196 NOTES. 



Note 19. Page 169. 
• Sigh-boi'n :' — 1 owe the suggestion of this word to aa 
obscure remombrance of a beautiful phrase in ' Giraldua Gam- 
brensis ' — viz., suspirioscB cogitationes. 

Note 20. Page 172. 
It is true that, according to the law of the case as established 
by legal precedents, all carriages were required to give way be- 
fore Royal equipages, and therefore before the mail as one of 
them. But this only increased the danger, as being a regulation 
very imperfectly made known, very unequally enforced, and 
therefore often embarrassing the movements on both sides. 

Note 21. Page 172. 
' Quartering : ' — This is the technical word, and, I pre- 
sume, derived from the French cartarjer, to evade a rut or any 
obstacle. 

Note 22. Page 180. 
' Averted signs : ' — I read the course and changes of the lady's 
agony in the succession of her involuntary gestures ; but it must 
be remembered that I read all this from the rear, never onco 
catching the lady's full face, and even her profile imperfectly. 

Note 23. Page 186. 
' Campo Santo : ' — It is probable that most of my readers 
will be acquainted with the history of the Campo Santo (or cem- 
etery) at Pisa, composed of earth brought from Jerusalem for a 
bed of sanctity, as the highest prize which the noble piety of 
crusaders could ask or imagine. To readers who are unac- 
quainted with England, or who (being English) are yet unac- 
quainted with the cathedral cities of England, it may be right to 
mention that the graves within-side the cathedrals often form a 
flat pavement over which carriages and horses might run ; and 
perhaps a boyish remembrance of one particular cathedral, 
across which I had seen passengers walk and burdens carried, aa 
about two centuries back they were through the middle of St. 
Paul's in London, may have assisted my dream. 



DINNER, REAL, AND REPUTED. 

Gkeat misconceptions have always prevailed about 
the Roman dinner. Dinner [ccE/ia] was the only meal 
which the Romans as a nation took. It was no acci- 
dent, but arose out of their whole social economy. 
This I shall endeavor to show, by running through the 
history of a Roman day. Ridentem dicere verum quid 
tetat 7 And the course of this review will expose one 
or two important truths in ancient political economy, 
which have been too much overlooked. 

"With the lark it was that the Roman rose. Not 
that the earliest lark rises so early in Latium as the 
earliest lark in England ; that, is, during summer : but 
then, on the other hand, neither does it ever rise so 
late. The Roman citizen was stirring with the dawn 
— which, allowing for the shorter longest-day and 
longer shortest- day of Rome, you may call about four 
in summer — about seven in winter. Why did he do 
this ? Because he went to bed at a very early hour. 
But why did he do that ? By backing in this way, 
we shall sui'cly back into the very well of truth : al- 
ways, where it is possible, let us have the pourqiwi of 
the pourquoi. The Roman went to bed early for two 
remarkable reasons. 1st, Because in Rome, built for 
a martial destiny, every habit of life had reference to 

[197] 



198 DINNER, REAL, AND EEPTTTED. 

the usages of war. Every citizen, if lie were not a 
mere proletarian animal kept at the public cost, with a 
view to his proles or offspring, held himself a soldier- 
elect : the more noble he was, the more was his lia- 
bility to military service ; in short, all Rome, and at 
all times, was consciously ' in procinct.' ^ Now it was 
a principle of ancient warfare, that every hour of day- 
light had a triple worth, as valued against hours of 
darkness. That was one reason — a reason suggested 
by the understanding. But there was a second reason, 
far more remarkable ; and this was a reason suggested 
by a blind necessity. It is an important fact, that this 
planet on which Ave live, this little industrious earth of 
ours, has developed her wealth by slow stages of in- 
crease. She was far from being the rich little globe in 
Caesar's days that she is at present. The earth in our 
days is incalculably richer, as a whole, than in the 
time of Charlemagne ; and at that time she was richer, 
by many a million of acres, than in the era of Augus- 
tus. In that Augustan era we descry a clear belt of 
cultivation, averaging perhaps six hundred miles in 
depth, running in a ring-fence about the Mediterra- 
nean. This belt, and no more, was in decent cultiva- 
tion. Beyond that belt, there was only a wild Indian 
cultivation ; generally not so much. At present, what 
a differ ence ! We have that very belt, but much rich- 
er, all things considered, cequatis ceqicandis, than in the 
Roman era and much beside. The reader must not 
look to single cases, as that of Egypt or other parts of 
Africa, but take the whole collectively. On that 
Bcheme of valuation, Ave have the old Roman belt, the 
circum Mediterranean girdle not much tarnished, and 
we have all the rest of Europe to boot. Such being 



DINNEE, REAL, ASD REPUTED. 199 

the case, the earth, being (as a whole) in that Pagan 
era so incomparably poorer, could not in the Pagan 
era support the expense of maintaining great empires 
in cold latitudes. Her purse would not reach that 
cost. Wherever she undertook in those early ages to 
rear man in great abundance, it must be where nature 
would consent to work in partnership with herself; 
where warmth Avas to be had for nothing ; where 
clothes were not so entirely indispensable, but that a 
ragged fellow might still keep himself warm ; where 
slight shelter might serve ; and where the soil, if not 
absolutely richer in reversionary wealth, was more 
easily cultiu'ed. Nature, in those days of infancy, 
must come forward liberally, and take a number of 
shares in every new joint-stock concern before it could 
move. Man, therefore, went to bed early in those 
ages, simply because his worthy mother earth could not 
afford him candles. She, good old lady (or good 
young lady, for geologists know not 2 whether she is 
in that stage of her progress which corresponds to 
gray hairs, or to infancy, or to ' a certain age ') — she, 
good lady, would certainly have shuddered to hear any 
of her nations asking for candles. ' Candles, indeed ! ' 
she would have said, ' who ever heard of such a thing ? 
and with so much excellent daylight running to waste, 
as I have provided gratis ! What will the wretches 
want next ? ' 

The daylight, furnished gratis, was certainly ' unde- 
niable ' in its quality, and quite sufficient for all pur- 
])oses that were honest. Seneca, even in his own 
luxurious period, called those men ' lucifugcB,^ and by 
other ugly names, who lived chiefly by candle-light. 
Non^ but rich and luxurious men, nay, even amongst 



200 DINNER, REAL, AND EEIUTED. 

these, none but idlers, did live or could live by candle* 
ligbt. An immense majority of men in Rome never 
ligbted a candle, unless sometimes in tbe early dawn. 
And this custom of Rome was the custom also of all 
nations that lived round the great lake of the Mediter- 
ranean. In Athens, Egypt, Palestine, Asia Minor, 
everywhere, the ancients went to bed, like good boys, 
from seven to nine o'clock.^ The Turks and other 
people, who have succeeded to the stations and the 
habits of the ancients, do so at this day. 

The Roman, therefore, who saw no joke in sitting 
round a table in the dark, went off to bed as the dark- 
ness began. Everybody did so. Old Numa Pom- 
pilius himself was obliged to trundle off in the dusk. 
Tarquinius might be a very superb fellow ; but I doubt 
whether he ever saw a farthing rushlight. And, 
though it may be thought that plots and conspiracies 
would flourish in such a city of darkness, it is to be 
considered, that the conspirators themselves had no more 
candles than honest men : both parties Avere in the dark. 

Being up, then, and stirring not long after the lark, 
what mischief did the Roman go about first ? Now-a- 
days, he would have taken a pipe or a cigar. But, 
alas for the ignorance of the poor heathen creatures ! 
they had neither the one nor the other. In this point, 
I must tax our mother earth with being really too 
stingy. In the case of the candles, I approve of her 
parsimony. Much mischief is brewed by candle- 
light. But it was coming it too strong to allow no 
tobacco. Many a wild fellow in Rome, your Gracchi, 
Syllas, Catilines, would not have played ' h — and 
Tommy ' in the way they did, if they could have 
soothed their angry stomachs with a sigar ; a pipe 



DINNJEB, BEAL, AND EEPUTED. 201 

has intercepted many an evil scheme. But the thing 
is past helping now. At Rome, you must do as ' they 
does' at Rome. So, after shaving (supposing the age 
of the Barbati to be past), what is the first business 
that our Roman will undertake ? Forty to one he is a 
poor man, born to look upwards to his fellow-men — ■ 
and not to look down upon anybody but slaves. He 
goes, therefore, to the palace of some grandee, some 
top-sawyer of the senatorian order. This great man, for 
all his greatness, has turned out even sooner than him- 
self. For he also has had no candles and no cigars ; and 
he well knows, that before the sun looks into his portals, 
all his halls will be overflowing and buzzing with the 
matin susurrus of courtiers — the ' mane salutantes.' * 
It is as much as his popularity is worth to absent himself, 
or to keep people waiting. But surely, the reader may 
think, this poor man he might keep waiting. No, he 
might not ; for, though poor, being a citizen, the man 
is a gentleman. That was the consequence of keeping 
slaves. Wherever there is a class of slaves, he that 
enjoys the^MS suffragii (no matter how poor) is a gen- 
tleman. The true Latin word for a gentleman is in- 
genuus — a freeman and the son of a freeman. 

Yet even here there were distinctions. Under the 
emperors, the coiu-tiers were divided into two classes : 
with respect to the superior class, it was said of the 
sovereign — that he saw them (^^ videbat') ; with re- 
spect to the other — that he was seen {^ videbatur '). 
Even Plutarch mentions it as a common boast in his 
times, idling eidiv o ^uoiXtvi — CcEsar is in the habit of see- 
ihg me ; or, as a common plea for evading a suit, 
ixcQu? 6na iiaXXot — I am sovry to say he is more inclined 
to look upon others. And this usage derived itself 



5i02 DINNER, KEAL, AND KEPTTTED. 

(mark that well !) from the republican era. The aulic 
spirit was propagated by the empire, but from a repub- 
lican root. 

Having paid his court, you will suppose that our 
friend comes home to breakfast. Not at all : no such 
discovery as ' breakfast ' had then been made : breakfast 
was not invented for many centuries after that. I have 
always admired, and always shall admire, as the very 
best of all human stories, Charles Lamb's account of 
roast-pork, and its traditional origin in China. Ching 
Ping, it seems, had suflfered his father's house to be 
burned down: the outhouses were burned along with 
the house : and in one of these the pigs, by accident, 
were roasted to a turn. Memorable were the results 
for all future China and future civilization. Ping, who 
(like all China beside) had hitherto eaten his pig raw, 
now for the first time tasted it in a state of torrefac- 
tion. Of course he made his peace with his father by 
a part (tradition says a leg) of the new dish. The 
father was so astounded with the discovery, that he 
burned his house down once a-year for the sake of 
coming at an annual banquet of a roast pig. A curi- 
ous prying sort of a fellow, one Chang Pang, got to 
know of this. He also burned down a house with a 
pig in it, and had his eyes opened. The secret was 
ill kept — the discovery spread — many great conver- 
sions were made — houses were blazing in every part 
of the Celestial Empire. The insurance offices took 
the matter up. One Chong Pong, detected in the very 
act of shutting up a pig in his dramng-room, and then 
firing a train, was indicted on a charge of arson. 
The chief justice of Pekin, on that occasion, re- 
quested an officer of the court to hand him up a piece 



DINNEB, REAI,, AND KEPUTJBD. 203 

of the roast pig, the corpus delicti : pure curiosity it 
was, liberal curiosity, that led him to taste ; but within 
two days after, it was observed, says Lamb, that his 
lordship's town-house was on fire. In short, all China 
apostatized to the new faith ; and it was not until 
some centuries had passed, that a man of prodigious 
genius arose, viz., Chung Pung, who, established the 
second era in the history of roast pig by showing that 
it could be had without burning down a house. 

No such genius had yet arisen in Rome. Breakfast 
was not suspected. No prophecy, no type of break- 
fast, had been" published. In fact, it took as much 
time and research to arrive at that great discovery as 
at the Copcrnican system. True it is, reader, that 
you have heard of such a word as jentaculum ; and 
your dictionary translates that old heathen word by 
the Christian word breakfast. But dictionaries are 
dull deceivers. Between jentaculum and breakfast the 
differences are as wide as between a horse-chestnut 
and a chestnut horse ; differences in the time when, in 
the place where, in the vianner how, but pre-eminently 
in the thing which. 

Galen is a good authority upon such a subject, since, 
if (like other Pagans) he ate no breakfast himself, in 
some sense he may be called the cause of breakfast to 
other men, by treating of those things which could 
Bafely be taken upon an empty stomach. As to the 
time, he (like many other authors) says, ntQi rQirtjv, >/ 
(to fiaynoxfoov) /Tfoi TtTo(iTj;ri about the third, or at far- 
thest about the fourth hour : and so exact is he, that 
he assumes the day to lie exactly between six and six 
o'clock, and to be divided into thirteen equal portions. 
So the time will be a few minutes before nine, or a 



204 DINNEB, BEAX, AND EEPUTED. 

few minutes before ten, in tlie forenoon. That seems 
fair enough. But it is not time in respect to its location 
that we are concerned with, so much as time in respect 
to its duration. Now, heaps of authorities take it 
for granted, that you are not to sit down — you are to 
stand ; and, as to the place, that any place will do - — 
' any corner of the forum,' says Galen, ' any corner 
that you fancy : ' which is like referring a man for his 
salle a manger to Westminster Hall or Fleet Street. 
Augustus, in a letter still surviving, tells us that he 
jentahat, or took his jentaculum, in his carriage ; some- 
times in a wheel carriage [in essecZo),. sometimes in a 
litter or palanquin {in lecticd). This careless and dis- 
orderly way as to time and place, and other circum- 
stances of haste, sufficiently indicate the quality of the 
meal you are to expect. Already you are ' sagacious 
of your quarry from so far.' Not that we would pre- 
sume, excellent reader, to liken you to Death, or to 
insinuate that you are a ' grim feature.' But would 
it not make a saint ' grim ' to hear of such prepara- 
tions for the morning meal ? And then to hear of 
such consummations as panis siccus, dry bread ; or (if 
the learned reader thinks it will taste better in Greek), 
uQTog ^tjQog ! And what may this word dry happen 
to mean? 'Does it mean stale 7^ says Salmasius. 
' Shall we suppose,' says he, in querulous words, 
* molli et recenti opponi,' that it is placed in antithesis 
to soft and new bread, what English sailors call '■ soft 
tommy 7 ' and from that antithesis conclude it to be, 
' durum et non recens coctum, eoque sicciorcm 7 ' Hard 
and stale, and in that proportion more arid? Not 
quite so bad as that, we hope. Or again — ' siccum 
pro Mscocto, ut hodie vocamus, sumemus 7 ' ^ By hodie 



DINNEE, REAL, AND KEPUTED. 205 

Salmasius means, amongst his countrymen of France, 
where biscoctus is verbatim reproduced in the word his 
(twice), ciiit (baked) ; Avhencc our own biscuit. Bis- 
cuit might do very Avell, coukl we be sure that it was 
cabin biscuit ; but Salmasius argues that — in this case 
he takes it to mean ' bucceJlatum, qui est panis nauti- 
cus ; ' that is, the ship company's biscuit, broken with 
a sledge-hammer. In Greek, for the benefit again of 
the learned reader, it is termed Sinvnog, indicating that 
it has passed twice under the action of fire. 

' Well,' you say, ' no matter if it had passed 
through the fires of Moloch; only let us have this 
biscuit, such as it is.' In good faith, then, fasting 
reader, you are not likely to see much more than you 
hai^e seen. It is a very Barmecide feast, we do assure 
you — this same ' jentaculixm ; ' at w'hich abstinence 
and patience are much more exercised than the teeth : 
faith and hope are the chief graces cultivated, together 
with that species of the magnijicum which is founded 
on the ignotum. Even this biscuit was allowed in the 
most limited quantities ; for which reason it is that 
the Greeks called this apology for a meal by the name 
of (tsxxiaiio?, a word formed (as many words were in 
the Post- Augustan ages) from a Latin word — viz., 
buccca, a mouthful ; not literally such, but so much as 
a polished man could allow himself to put into his 
mouth at once. ' We took a mouthful,' says Sir 
William Waller, the parliamentary general — 'took 
a mouthful ; paid our reckoning ; mounted ; and were 
off.' But there Sir William means, ty his plausible 
' mouthful,' something very much beyond either nine 
or nineteen ordinary quantities of that denomination, 
whereas the Roman ' jentaculum' was literally such; 



206 DINNEE, EEAL, AND KEPUTED. 

and, accordingly, one of the varieties under which, the 
ancient vocabularies express this model of evanescent 
quantities is gustatio, a mere tasting ; and again, it 
is called by another variety gustus, a mere taste 
[whence comes the old French word gouster for a 
refection or luncheon, and then (by the usual suppres- 
sion of the s) gouter^. Speaking of his uncle, Pliny 
the Younger says : ' Post solem plerumque lavabatur : 
deinde gustabat ; dormiebat minimum ; mox, quasi 
alio die, studebat in coenae tempus.' ' After taking 
the air, generally speaking, he bathed ; after that he 
broke his fast on a morsel of biscuit, and took a very 
slight siesta : which done, as if awaking to a new day, 
he set in regularly to his studies, and pursued them to 
dinner-time.' Gustahat here meant that nondescript 
meal which arose at Rome when jentaculum and pran- 
dium were fused into one, and that only a taste or 
mouthful of biscuit, as we shall show farther on. 

Possibly, however, most excellent reader, like some 
epicurean traveller, who, in crossing the Alps, finds 
himself weather-bound at St. Bernard's on Ash- Wed- 
nesday, you surmise a remedy : you descry some open- 
ing from ' the loopholes of retreat,' through which a 
few delicacies might be insinuated to spread verdure 
on this arid wilderness of biscuit. Casuistry can do 
much. A dead hand at casuistry has often proved 
more than a match for Lent with all his quarantines. 
But sorry I am to say that, in this case, no relief is 
hinted at in any ancient author. A grape or two (not 
a bunch of grapes), a raisin or two, a date, an olive — 
these are the whole amount of relief^ which the 
chancery of the Roman kitchen granted in such cases. 
All things here hang together, and prove each othe* 



DINNEB, SEAL, AND EEPXTTED. 207 

— the time, the place, the mode, the thing. Well 
might man eat standing, or eat in public, such a trifle 
as tliis. Go home, indeed, to such a breakfast ? You 
would as soon think of ordering a cloth to be laid in 
order to cat a peach, or of asking a friend to join you 
in an orange. No man in his senses makes ' two bites 
of a cherry.' So let us pass on to the other stages of 
the day. Only, in taking leave of this morning's 
stage, throw your eyes back with me. Christian reader, 
upon this truly heathen meal, fit for idolatrous dogs 
like your Greeks and your Romans ; survey, through 
the vista of ages, that thrice-accursed biscuit, with 
half a fig, perhaps, by way of garnish, and a huge 
hammer by its side, to secure the certainty of mastica- 
tion, by previous comminution. Then turn your eyes 
to a Christian breakfast — hot rolls, eggs, coffee, beef; 
but down, down, rebellious visions ; we need say no 
more ! You, reader, like myself, will breathe a male- 
diction on the Classical era, and thank your stars for 
making you a Romanticist. Every morning I thank 
mine for keeping me back from the Augustan age, and 
reserving me to a period in which breakfast had been 
already invented. In the words of Ovid, I say : — 

' Prisca juvent alios : ego me nunc denique natum 
Gratulor. Haec cetas moribus apta meis.' 

Our friend, the Roman cit, has therefore thus far, iu 
his progress through life, obtained no breakfast, if he 
ever contemplated an idea so frantic. But it occurs to 
you, my faithful reader, that perhaps he will not 
always be thus unhappy. I could bring wagon-loads 
of sentiments, Greek as well as Roman, which prove, 
more clearly than the most eminent pikestaff, that, as 



208 DINNER, EEAL, AND REPUTED. 

the wheel of fortune revolves, simply out of tlie fact 
tliat it has carried a man downwards, it must subse- 
quently carry him upwards, no matter what dislike 
that wheel, or any of its spokes, may bear to that 
man : ' non si male nunc sit, et olim sic erit : ' and 
that if a man, through the madness of his nation, 
misses coffee and hot rolls at nine, he may easily run 
into a leg of mutton at twelve. True it is he may do 
so : truth is commendable ; and I will not deny that a 
man may sometimes, by losing a breakfast, gain a 
dinner. Such things have been in various ages, and 
will be again, but not at Rome. There were reasons 
against it. We have heard of men who consider life 
under the idea of a wilderness — dry as a ' remainder 
biscuit after a voyage : ' and who consider a day under 
the idea of a little life. Life is the macrocosm, or 
world at large ; day is the microcosm, or world in min- 
iature. Consequently, if life is a wilderness, then day, 
as a little life, is a little wilderness. And this wilder- 
ness can be safely traversed only by having relays of 
fountains, or stages for refreshment. Such stages, 
they conceive, are found in the several meals which 
Providence has stationed at due intervals through the 
day, whenever the perverseness of man does not break 
the chain, or derange the order of succession. 

These are the anchors by which man rides in that 
billowy ocean between morning and night. The first 
anchor, viz., breakfast, having given way in Rome, the 
more need there is that he should pull up by the 
second ; and that is often reputed to be dinner. And 
as your dictionary, good reader, translated hreakfast by 
that vain word jentaculum, so doubtless it will translate 
dinner by that still vainer word prandium. Sincerely 



1 



DINNEK, KEAL, AND EEPUXED. 209 

I hope tliat your own dinner on this day, and through 
all time coming, may have a better root in fact and 
substance than this most visionaiy of all baseless things 
— the Roman prandium, of which I shall presently 
ehow you that the most approved translation is moon- 
shine. 

Reader, I am anything but jesting here. In the 
very spirit of serious truth, I assure you that the delu- 
sion about ' jentaeulum ' is even exceeded by this other 
delusion about 'prandium.' Salmasius himself, for 
whom a natural prejudice of place and time partially 
obscured the truth, admits, however, that prandium 
was a meal which the ancients rarely took ; his very 
words are — '■ raro prandelant veteres.' Now, judge 
for yourself of the good sense which is shown in trans- 
lating by the word dinner, which must of necessity 
mean the chief meal, a Roman word which represents 
a fancy meal, a meal of caprice, a meal which few peo- 
ple took. At this moment, what is the single point of 
agreement between the noon meal of the English la- 
borer and the evening meal of the English gentleman ? 
What is the single circumstance common to both, 
which causes us to denominate them by the common 
name of dinner ? It is, that in both we recognize the 
"principal meal of the day, the meal upon which is 
thrown the onus of the day's support. In everything 
else they are as wide asunder as the poles ; but they 
agree in this one point of their function. Is it credible 
now, that, to represent such a meal amongst ourselves, 
we select a Roman word so notoriously expressing a 
mere shadow, a pure apology, that very few people ever 
tasted it — nobody sat down to it — not many washed 
their hands after it, and gradually the very name of it 
18 



210 DINNER, REAL, AND REPUTED. 

became interchangeable with another name, implying 
the slightest possible act of tentative tasting or sip- 
ping ? ' Post lavationem sine mensd prandium,' saya 
Seneca, ' post quod nan sunt lavandce manus ; ' that is, 
' after bathing, I take a prandium without sitting down 
to table, and such a prandium as brings after itself no 
need of washing the hands.' No ; moonshine as little 
soils the hands as it oppresses the stomach. 

Reader ! I, as well as Pliny, had an uncle, an East 
Indian uncle ; doubtless you have such an uncle ; 
everybody has an Indian uncle. Generally such a 
person is ' rather yellow, rather yellow ' (to quote 
Canning versus Lord Durham), that is the chief fault 
with Ms physics ; but, as to his morals, he is univer- 
sally a man of princely aspirations and habits. He is 
not always so orientally rich as he is reputed ; but he 
is always orientally munificent. Call upon him at any 
hour from two to five, he insists on your taking tiffin : 
and such a tiffin ! The English corresponding term is 
luncheon ; but how meagre a shadow is the European 
meal to its glowing Asiatic cousin ! Still, gloriously as 
tiffin shines, does anybody imagine that it is a vicarious 
dinner, or ever meant to be the substitute and locum 
tenens of dinner ? Wait till eight, and you will have 
your eyes opened on that subject. So of the Roman 
prandium : had it been as luxurious as it was simple, 
still it was always viewed as something meant only to 
stay the stomach, as a prologue to something beyond. 
The prandium was far enough from giving the feeblest 
idea even of the English luncheon ; yet it stood in the 
same relation to the Roman day. Now to English- 
me7i that meal scarcely exists ; and were it not for 
women, whose delicacy of organization does not allow 



DINNER, KEAL, AND REPUTED. 211 

them to fast so long as men, would probably be abol- 
ished. It is singular in this, as in other points, how 
nearly England and ancient Rome approximate. We 
all know how hard it is to tempt a man generally into 
spoiling his appetite, by eating before dinner. The 
same dislike of violating what they called the integrity 
of the appetite {integrant famem), existed at Rome. 
Integer means what is intact, unviolated by touch. 
Cicero, when protesting against spoiling his appetite 
for dinner, by tasting anything beforehand, says, inte' 
gram famem ad coenam afferam ; I intend bringing to 
dinner an appetite untampered with. Nay, so much 
stress did the Romans lay on maintaining this primi- 
tive state of the appetite undisturbed, that any prolu- 
sions with either jentaculum or ^;ra?JfZm??j were said, 
by a very strong phrase indeed, poUuere famem, to 
pollute the sanctity of the appetite. The appetite was 
regarded as a holy vestal flame, soaring upwards to- 
wards dinner throughout the day : if undebauched, it 
tended to its natural consummation in coena : expiring 
like a phoenix, to rise again out of its own ashes. On 
this theory, to which language had accommodated 
itself, the two prelusive meals of nine or ten o'clock 
A. M., and of one p. m., so far from being ratified by 
the public sense, and adopted into the economy of the 
day, were regarded gloomily as gross irregularities, 
enormities, dcbauchers of the natural instinct ; and, in 
so far as they thwarted that instinct, lessened it, or 
depraved it, were almost uniformly held to be full of 
pollution ; and, finally, to profane a sacred motion of 
nature. Such was the language. 

But we guess what is passing in the reader's mind. 
He thinks that all this proves the prandium to have 



212 DINNER, SEAL, AND REPUTED. 

been a meal of little account ; and in very many cases 
absolutely unknown. But still he tbinks all tbia 
might happen to the English dinner — that also might 
be neglected ; supper might be generally preferred ; 
and, nevertheless, dinner would be as truly entitled to 
the name of dinner as before. Many a student 
neglects his dinner ; enthusiasm in any pursuit must 
often have extinguished appetite for all of us. Many 
a time and oft did this happen to Sir Isaac Newton. 
Evidence is on record, that such a deponent at eight 
o'clock A. M. found Sir Isaac with one stocking on, one 
off; at two, said deponent called him to dinner. 
Being interrogated whether Sir Isaac had pulled on 
the minus stocking, or gartered the plus stocking, wit- 
ness replied that he had not. Being asked if Sir 
Isaac came to dinner, replied that he did not. Being 
again asked, ' At sunset, did you look in on Sir 
Isaac?' witness replied, 'I did.' 'And now, upon 
your conscience, sir, by the virtue of your oath, in what 
state were the stockings ? ' Ans. — ' In statu quo ante 
bellum.' It seems Sir Isaac had fought through that 
whole battle of a long day, so trying a campaign to 
many people — he had traversed that Avhole sandy 
Zaarah, without calling, or needing to call, at one of 
those fountains, stages, or mansiones,'' by which (ac- 
cording to our former explanation) Providence has re- 
lieved the continuity of arid soil, which else disfigures 
that long dreary level. This happens to all ; but was 
dinner not dinner, and did supper become dinner, 
because Sir Isaac Newton ate nothing at the first, and 
threw the whole day's support upon the last ? No, 
you will say, a rule is not defeated by one casual 
deviation, nor by one person's constant deviation. 



DINNEK, EEAL, AND REPUTED. 213 

Everybody else was still dining at two, though Sir 
Isaac might not ; and Sir Isaac himself on most days 
no more deferred his dinner beyond two, than he sat in 
public with one stocking off. But what if everybody, 
Sir Isaac included, had deferred his substantial meal 
until night, and taken a slight refection only at two } 
The question put does really represent the very case 
which has happened with us in England. In 1700, a 
large part of London took a meal at two p. m., and 
another at seven or eight p. m. At present, a large 
part of London is still doing the very same thing, tak- 
ing one meal at two, and another at seven or eight. 
But the names are entirely changed : the two o'clock 
meal used to be called dinner, whereas at present it is 
called luncheon ; the seven o'clock meal used to be 
called supper, whereas at present it is called dinner ; 
and in both cases the difference is anything but 
verbal : it expresses a translation of that main meal, 
on which the day's support rested, from mid-day to 
evening. 

Upon reviewing the idea of dinner, we soon perceive 
that time has little or no connection with it : since, 
both in England and France, dinner has travelled, like 
the hand of a clock, through every hour between ten, 
A. >r. and ten p. m. We have a list, well attested, of 
every successive hour between these limits having 
been the known established hour for the royal dinner- 
table within the last three hundred and fifty years. 
Time, therefore, vanishes from the problem ; it is a 
quantity regularly exterminated. The true elements 
of the idea are evidently these : — 1 . That dinner 13 
that meal, no matter when taken, which is the princi- 
pal meal ; i. e., the meal on which the day's support is 



214 DINNER, HEAL, AND REPUTED. 

thrown, 2. That it is therefore the meal of hospitality 
3. That it is the meal (with reference to both Nos. 1 
and 2) in which animal food predominate. 4. That it 
is that meal which, upon a necessity arising for the 
abolition of all hut one, would naturally offer itself as 
that one. Apply these four tests to prandium : — 
How could that meal prandium answer to the first 
test, as the day's support, which few people touched ? 
How could that meal prandium answer to the second 
test, as the meal of hospitality, at which nobody sat 
down ? How could that meal prandium answer to the 
third test, as the meal of animal food, which consisted 
exclusively and notoriously of bread ? Or answer to 
the fourth test, as the privileged meal entitled to sur- 
vive the abolition of the rest, which was itself abolished 
at all times in practice ? 

Tried, therefore, by every test, prandium vanishes. 
But I have something further to communicate about 
this same prandium. 

1. It came to pass, by a very natural association of 
feeling, that prandium and jentaculum, in the latter 
centuries of Rome, were generally confounded. This 
result was inevitable. Both professed the same basis. 
Both came in the morning. Both were fictions. Hence 
they melted and collapsed into each other. 

That fact speaks for itself — the modern breakfast 
and luncheon never could have been confounded ; but 
■who would be at the pains of distinguishing two 
shadows ? In a gambling-house of that class, where 
you are at liberty to sit down to a splendid banquet, 
anxiety probably prevents your sitting down at all ; 
but, if you do, the same cause prevents you noticing 
what you eat. So of the two pseudo meals of Rome, 



DINNEB, HEAL, AND REPUTED. 215 

they came in the very midst of the Roman business — 
nz., from nine A. M. to two p. M. Nobody could give 
his mind to them, had they been of better quality. 
There lay one cause of their vagueness — viz., in their 
position. Another cause was, the common basis of 
both. Bread was so notoriously the predominating 
' feature ' in each of these jirelusive banquets, that all 
foreigners at Rome, who communicated with Romans 
through the Greek language, knew both the one and 
the other by the name of aQroairu;, or the bread repast. 
Originally, this name had been restricted to the earlier 
meal. But a distinction without a difference could not 
sustain itself; and both alike disguised their emptiness 
under this pompous quadrisyllable. All words are 
suspicious, there is an odor of fraud about them, which. 
— being concerned with common things — are so base 
as to stretch out to four syllables. What does an honest 
word want with more than two ? In the identity of 
substance, therefore, lay a second ground of confusion. 
And then, thirdly, even as to the time, which had ever 
been the sole real distinction, there arose from accident 
a tendency to converge. For it happened that, while 
some had jentaculum but no prandium, others had 
prandium but no jentaculum ; a third party had both ; 
a fourth party, by much the largest, had neither. Out 
of which four varieties (who would think that a non- 
entity could cut up into so many somethings ?) arose a 
fifth party of compromisers, who, because they could 
not afford a regular c(zna, and yet were hospitably dis- 
posed, fused the two ideas into one ; and so, because 
the usual time for the idea of a breakfast was nine to 
ten, and for the idea of a luncheon twelve to one, com- 
promised the rival pretensions by what diplomatists 



216 DINNER, REAr, AND KEPTTTED. 

call a mezzo termine ; bisecting the time at eleven, and 
melting the two ideas into one. But, by thus merg- 
ing the separate times of each, they abolished the sole 
real difference that had ever divided them. Losing 
that, they lost all. 

Perhaps, as two negatives make one affirmative, it 
may be thought that two layers of moonshine might 
coalesce into one pancake ; and two Barmecide ban- 
quets might be the square root of one poached egg. 
Of that the company were the best judges. But, 
probably, as a rump and dozen, in our land of wagers, 
is construed with a very liberal latitude as to the 
materials, so Martial's invitation, ' to take bread with 
him at eleven,' might be understood by the awiroi (the 
knowing ones) as significant of something better than 
aQToairog. Otherwise, in good truth, ' moonshine and 
turn-out ' at eleven a. m. would be even worse than 
' tea and turn-out ' at eight p. m., which the ' fervida 
juventus ' of Young England so loudly deprecates. 
But, however that might be, in this convergement of 
the several frontiers, and the confusion that ensued, 
one cannot wonder that, whilst the two bladders col- 
lapsed into one idea, they actually expanded into four 
names — two Latin and two Greek, gustus and gus- 
tatio, yivaig and yevofia — which all alike express the 
merely tentative or exploratory act of a prcegustator 
or professional ' taster ' in a king's household : what, 
if applied to a fluid, we should denominate sipping. 

At last, by so many steps all in one direction, things 
tad come to such a pass — the two prelusive meals of 
the Roman morning, each for itself separately vague 
from the beginning, had so communicated and inter- 
fused their several and joint vaguenesses, that at last 



i 



DINNEE, KEAL, AND REPUTED. 217 

no man knew or cared to know what any other man 
included in his idea of either ; how much or how little. 
And you might as Avell have hunted in the woods of 
Ethiopia for Prester John, or fixed the parish of the 
Everlasting Jew,^ as have attempted to say what ' jen- 
taculum ' certainly ivas, or what ' prandium ' certainly 
was not. Only one thing was clear, that neither Avas 
anything that people cared for. They were both 
empty shadows ; but shadows as they were, we find 
from Cicero that they had a power of polluting and 
profaning better things than themselves. 

We presume that no rational man will heceforth 
look for ' dinner ' — that great idea according to Dr. 
Johnson — that sacred idea according to Cicero — in 
a bag of moonshine on one side, or a bag of pollution 
on the other. Prandium, so far from being what our 
foolish dictionaries pretend — dinner itself — never in 
its palmiest days was more or other than a miser- 
able attempt at being luncheon. It was a conatus, 
what physiologists call a nisus, a struggle in a very 
ambitious spark, or scintilla, to kindle into a fire. 
This nisus went on for some centuries ; but finally 
evaporated in smoke. If prandium had worked out 
its ambition, had ' the great stream of tendency ' ac- 
complished all its purposes, prandium never could 
have been more than a very indifi'erent luncheon. But 
now, 

2. I have to off'er another fact, ruinous to our dic- 
tionaries on another ground. Various circumstances 
have disguised the truth, but a truth it is, that ' pran- 
dium,' in its very origin and incunabula, never was a 
meal known to the Roman culina. In that court it 
was never recognized except as an alien* It had no 
19 



218 DINNER, KEAL, AND KEPUTED. 

original domicile in tlie city of E.ome. It was a vox 
castvensis, a word and an idea purely martial, and 
pointing to martial necessities. Amongst the new 
ideas proclaimed to the recruit, this was one — ' Look 
for no " ccena," no regular dinner, with us. Resign 
these unwarlike notions. It is true that even war has 
its respites ; in these it would be possible to have our 
Koman cceiia with all its equipage of ministrations. 
But luxury untunes the mind for doing and suffering. 
Let us voluntarily renounce it ; that, when a necessity 
of renouncing it arrives, we may not feel it among the 
hardships of war. From the day when you enter the 
gates of the camp, reconcile yourself, tiro, to a new 
fashion of meal, to what in camp dialect we call pran- 
dium.^ This prandium, this essentially military meal, 
was taken standing, by way of symbolizing the ne- 
cessity of being always ready for the enemy. Hence 
the posture in Avhich it was taken at Rome, the very 
counter-pole to the luxurious posture of dinner. A 
writer of the third century, a period from Avhich the 
Romans naturally looked back upon everything con- 
nected with their own early habits, Avith much the 
same kind of interest as we extend to our Alfred (sep- 
arated from us, as Romulus from them, by just a thou- 
sand years), in speaking of prandium, says, ' Quod 
dictum est parandium, ab eo quod milites ad bellum 
paret.^ Isidorus again says, ' Proprie apud veteres 
prandium vocatum fuisse omnem militum cibum ant* 
pugnam : ' -i. e., ' that, properly speaking, amongst our 
ancestors every military meal taken before battle was 
termed prandium.' According to Isidore, the propo- 
sition is reciprocating ; viz., that, as every prandium 
•was a military meal, so every military meal was called 



DINNER, REAL, AKD UErUTED. 219 

jrrandium. But, in fact, the reason of that is apparent. 
Whether in the camp or the city, the early Romans 
had probably but one meal in a day. That is true of 
many a man amongst ourselves by choice ; it is true 
also, to our knowledge, of some horse regiments in our 
service, and may lie of all. This meal was called ccena, 
or dinner in the city — jorawrfiwm in camps. In the 
city, it would always be tending to one fixed hour. 
In the camp, innumerable accidents of war Avould 
make it very uncertain. On this account it would be 
an established rule to celebrate the daily meal at noon, 
if nothing hindered; not that a later hour would not 
have been preferred, had the choice been free ; but it 
was better to have a certainty at a bad hour, than by 
waiting for a better hour to make it an uncertainty. 
For it was a camp proverb — Pransus, paratus ; armed 
with his daily meal, the soldier is ready for service. 
It was not, however, that all meals, as Isidore imagined, 
were indiscriminately called prandium ; but that the 
one sole meal of the day, by accidents of war, might, 
and did, revolve through all hours of the day. 

The first introduction of this military meal into 
Rome itself would be through the honorable pedantry 
of old centurions, &c., delighting (like the Commodore 
Trunnions of our navy) to keep up in peaceful life 
some image or memorial of their past experience, so 
wild, so full of peril, excitement, and romance, as 
Roman warfare must have been in those ages. Many 
non-military people for health's sake, many as an 
excuse for eating early, many by Avay of interposing 
some refreshment between the stages of forensic busi- 
ness, would adopt this hurried and informal meal. 
Many would wish to see their sons adopting such a 



220 DINNER, HEAL, AND REPUTED. 

meal, as a training for foreign service in particular, and 
for temperance in general. It would also be main- 
tained by a solemn and very interesting commemora- 
tion of this camp repast in Rome. 

This commemoration, because it has been grossly 
misunderstood by Salmasius (whose error arose from 
not marking the true point of a particular antithesis), 
and still more, because it is a distinct confirmation of 
all I have said as to the military nature of prandium, 
I shall detach from the series of my illustrations, by 
placing it in a separate paragraph. 

On a set day the officers of the army were invited 
by Csesar to a banquet; it was a circumstance ex- 
pressly noticed in the invitation, that the banquet was 
not a ' coena,' but a ' prandium.' What did that imply? 
Why, that all the guests must present themselves 
in full military accoutrement ; whereas, observes the 
historian, had it been a cczna, the ofiicers would have 
unbelted their swords ; for he adds, even in Csesar's 
presence the officers are allowed to lay aside their 
swords. The word prandium, in short, converted the 
palace into the imperial tent ; and Caesar was no 
longer a civil emperor and princeps sendtus, but 
became a commander-in-chief amongst a council of 
his staff, all belted and plumed, and in full military fig. 

On this principle we come to understand why it is, 
that, whenever the Latin poets speak of an army as 
taking food, the word used is always prandens and 
pransus ; and when the word used is prandens, then 
always it is an army that is concerned. Thus Juvenal 
in a well-known passage : — 

' Credimus altos 
Desiccasse amnes, epotaque flmnina, Medo 
Prandente ' — 



JDINNEK, KEAL, AND EEPTTTED. 22 i 

tthat rivers were drunk up, when the Mede [i. e., the 
Median army under Xerxes] took his daily meal : 
prandcnte, observe, not ccenante : you might as well 
talk of an army taking tea and buttered toast, as taking 
c(tna. Nor is that word ever applied to armies. It is 
true that the converse is not so rigorously observed ; 
nor ought it, from the explanations already given. 
Though no soldier dined (^ccenahat), yet the citizen 
sometimes adopted the camp usage, and took a pran- 
dium. But generally the poets use the word merely 
to mark the time of day. In that most humorous ap- 
peal of Perseus — ' Cur quis non prandeat, hoc est .'' ' — 
is this a sufficient reason for losing one's prandium ? 
— he was obliged to say prandium, because no exhibi- 
tions ever could cause a man to lose his ccena, since 
none were displayed at a time of day when nobody in 
Rome would have attended. Just as, in alluding to a 
parliamentary speech notoriously delivered at midnight, 
an English satirist might have said. Is this a speech to 
furnish an argument for leaving one's bed ? — not as 
what stood foremost in his regard, but as the only 
thing that could be lost at that time of night. 

On this principle, also — viz. by going back to the 
military origin of prandium — we gain the interpreta- 
tion of all the peculiarities attached to it : viz. — 
1, its early hour ; 2, its being taken in a standing 
posture ; 3, in the open air ; 4, the humble quality of 
its materials — bread and biscuit (the main articles of 
military fare). In all these circumstances of the meal, 
we read most legibly written, the exotic (or non-civic) 
character of the meal, and its martial character. 

Thus I have brought down our Roman friend to 
noonday, or even one hour later than noon, and to 



222 DINNER, REAL, AND REPUTED. 

this moment the poor man has had nothing to eat. 
For supposing him to be not impransus, and supposing 
him jentdsse beside ; yet it is evident (I hope) that 
neither one nor the other means more than what it was 
often called — viz., ^sxxia^o?, or, in plain English, a 
mouthful. How long do we intend to keep him wait- 
ing? Reader, he will dine at three, or (supposing 
dinner pu* off to the latest) at four. Dinner was 
never known to be later than the tenth hour at Rome, 
which in summer would be past five ; but for a far 
greater proportion of days would be near four in Rome. 
And so entirely was a Roman the creature of ceremo- 
nial usage, that a national mourning would probably 
have been celebrated, and the ' sad augurs ' would 
have been called in to expiate the prodigy, had the 
general dinner lingered beyond four. 

But, meantime, what has our friend been about since 
perhaps six or seven in the morning? After paying 
his little homage to his patronus, in what way has he 
fought with the great enemy Time since then ? Why, 
reader, this illustrates one of the most interesting 
features in the Roman character. The Roman was the 
idlest of men. ' Man and boy,' he was ' an idler in 
the land.' He called himself and his pals, ' rerum 
dominos, gentemque togatam ' — ' the gentry that wore 
the toga.'' Yes, a pretty set of gentry they were, and 
a pretty affair that ' toga ' was. Just figure to your- 
self, reader, the picture of a hard-working man, with 
horny hands, like our hedgers, ditchers, porters, &c,, 
setting to work on the high road in that vast sweeping 
toga, filling with a strong gale like the mainsail of a 
frigate. Conceive the roars with which this magnifi- 
cent figure would be received into the bosom of a 



DINNEE, EEAL, AND EEPUTED. 223 

modern poor-house detachment sent out to attack the 
stones on some line of road, or a fatigue party of dust- 
men sent upon secret service. Had there been nothing 
left as a memorial of the Romans hut that one relic — 
their immeasurable toga ^ — I should have known that 
they were born and bred to idleness. In fact, except 
in war, the Roman never did anything at all but sun 
himself. Uti se apricaret was the final cause of peace 
in his opinion ; in literal truth, that he might make an 
apricot of himself. The public rations at all times 
supported the poorest inhabitant of Rome if he were a 
citizen. Hence it was that Hadrian was so astonished 
with the spectacle of Alexandria, ' civitas opidenta, 
fcccunda, in qua nemo vivat otiosus.'' Here first he 
saw the spectacle of a vast city, second only to Rome, 
where every man had something to do ; podagrosi 
quod agant liahent ; habcnt cosci quodfaciant; nc chi- 
ragrici ' (those ■with gout in the fingers) ' apud eos 
otiosi vivunt.' No poor rates levied upon the rest of 
the world for the benefit of their own paupers were 
there distributed gratis. The prodigious spectacle 
(such it seemed to Hadrian) was exhibited in Alexan- 
dria, of all men earning their bread in the sweat of 
their brow. In Rome only (and at one time in some 
of the Grecian states), it was the very meaning of citi- 
zen that he should vote and be idle. Precisely those 
were the two things which the Roman, thefcex Ro7nuH, 
had to do — viz., sometimes to vote, and always to be 
idle. 

In these circumstances, where the whole sum of 
life's duties amounted to voting, all the business a 
man could have was to attend the public assemblies, 
electioneering or factious. These, and any judicial 



224 DINNEK, KEAL, AKD EEPITTED. 

trial (public or private) that miglit happen to interest 
him for the persons concerned, or for the questions at 
stake, amused him through the morning ; that is, from 
eight till one. He might also extract some diversion 
from the columncR, or pillars of certain porticoes to 
vs'hich they pasted advertisements. These qffiches must 
have been numerous ; for all the girls in Rome who 
lost a trinket, or a pet bird, or a lap-dog, took this 
mode of angling in the great ocean of the public for 
the missing articles. 

But all this time I take for granted that there were 
no shows in a course of exhibition, either the dreadful 
ones of the amphitheatre, or the bloodless ones of the 
circus. If there were, then that became the business 
of all Romans ; and it was a business which would 
have occupied him from daylight until the light began 
to fail. Here we see another effect from the scarcity 
of artificial light amongst the ancients. These magni- 
ficent shows went on by daylight. But how incom- 
parably more gorgeous would have been the splendor 
by lamp-light ! What a gigantic conception ! Two 
hundred and fifty thousand human faces all revealed 
under one blaze of lamp-light ! Lord Bacon saw the 
mighty advantage of candle-light for the pomps and 
glories of this world. But the poverty of the earth 
was the original cause that the Pagan shows proceeded 
by day. Not that the masters of the world, who 
rained Arabian odors and perfumed waters of the 
most costly description from a thousand fountains, 
simply to cool the summer heats, would, in the latter 
centuries of Roman civilization, have regarded the ex- 
pense of light ; cedar and other odorous woods burning 
upon vast altars, together with every variety of fragrant 



DINNEE, KEAL, AND KEPUTED. 225 

torch, would have created light enough to shed a new 
day stretching over to the distant Adriatic. But pre- 
cedents derived from early ages of poverty, ancient 
traditions, overruled the practical usage. 

However, as there may happen to be no public spec- 
tacles, and the courts of political meetings (if not 
closed altogether by superstition) would at any rate be 
closed in the ordinary course by twelve or one o'clock, 
nothing remains for him to do, before returning home, 
except perhaps to attend the palcestra, or some public 
recitation of a poem written by a friend, but in any 
case to attend the public baths. For these the time 
varied ; and many people have thought it tyrannical in 
some of the Caesars that they imposed restraints on 
the time open for the baths ; some, for instance, would 
not suffer them to open at all before two ; and in any 
case, if you were later than four or five in summer, 
you would have to pay a fine, which most efiectually 
cleaned out the baths of all raff, since it was a sum 
that John Quires could not have produced to save his 
life. But it should be considered that the emperoi 
was the steward of the public resources for maintain 
ing the baths in fuel, oil, attendance, repairs. And 
certain it is, that during the long peace of the first 
Caesars, and after the annonarict provisio (that great 
pledge of popularity to a Roman prince) had been in- 
creased by the corn tribute from the Nile, the Roman 
population took a vast expansion ahead. The subse- 
quent increase of baths, whilst no old ones were 
neglected, proves that decisively. And as citizenship 
expanded by means of the easy terms on which il 
could be had, so did the bathers multiply. The popu- 
lation of Rome in the century after Augustus, was far 



226 DINNER, EEAL, AND REPUTED. 

greater than during that era ; and this, still acting aa 
a vortex to the rest of the world, may have been one 
great motive with Constantine for translating the capi- 
tal eastwards ; in reality, for breaking up one monster 
capital into two of more manageable dimensions. Two 
o'clock was sometimes the earliest hour at which the 
public baths were opened. But in Martial's time a 
man could go without blushing {salvd fronte) at eleven ; 
though even then two o'clock was the meridian hour 
for the great uproar of splashing, and swimming, and 
* larking ' in the endless baths of endless Rome. 

And now, at last, bathing finished, and the exercises 
of the palcestra, at half-past two, or three, our friend 
finds his way home — not again to leave it for that 
day. He is now a new man ; refreshed, oiled with 
perfumes, his dust washed off by hot water, and ready 
for enjoyment. These were the things that deter- 
mined the time for dinner. Had there been no other 
proof that ccena was the Roman dinner, this is an am- 
ple one. Now first the Roman was fit for dinner, in a 
condition of luxurious ease ; business over — that day's 
load of anxiety laid aside — his cuticle, as he delighted 
to talk, cleansed and polished — nothing more to do 
or to think of until the next morning : he might now 
go and dine, and get drunk with a safe conscience. 
Besides, if he does not get dinner now, when will he 
get it ? For most demonstrably he has taken nothing 
yet which comes near in value to that basin of soup 
which many of ourselves take at the Roman hour of 
bathing. No ; we have kept our man fasting as yet. 
It is to be hoped, that something is coming at last. 

Yes, something is coming ; dinner is coming, the 
great meal of ' ccBna ; ' the meal sacred to hospitality 



DINNER, REAL, AND HEPUTED. 227 

and genial pleasure comes now to fill up the rest of 
the day, until light fails altogether. 

Many people are of opinion that the Romans only 
understood what the capabilities of dinner were. It ia 
certain that they were the first great people that dis- 
covered the true secret and meaning of dinner, tho 
great office which it fulfils, and which we in England 
are now so generally acting on. Barbarous nations — 
and none were, in that respect, more barbarous than 
our own ancestors — made this capital blunder : the 
brutes, if you asked them what was the use of dinner, 
what it was meant for, stared at you, and rej^lied — as 
a horse would reply, if you put the same question 
about his provender — that it was to give him strength 
for finishing his work ! Therefore, if you point your 
telescope back to antiquity about twelve or one o'clock 
in the daytime, you will descry our most worthy an- 
cestors all eating for their very lives, eating as dogs 
eat — viz., in bodily fear that some other dog will 
come and take their dinner away. What swelling of 
the veins in the temples (see Boswell's natural history 
of Dr. Johnson at dinner) ! what intense and rapid 
deglutition ! what odious clatter of knives and plates ! 
what silence of the human voice ! what gravity ! what 
fury in the libidinous eyes with which they contem- 
plate the dishes ! Positively it was an indecent spec- 
tacle to see Dr. Johnson at dinner. But, above all, 
what maniacal haste and hurry, as if the fiend were 
waiting with red-hot pincers to lay hold of the hind- 
ermost ! 

Oh, reader, do you recognize in this abominable 
picture your respected ancestors and ours ? Excuse 
me for saying, ' What monsters ! ' I have a right to 



228 DINNERj KEAL, AND EEPUTED. 

call my own ancestors monsters ; and, if so, I must 
have the same right over yours. For Southey has shown 
plainly in the ' Doctor,' that every man having four 
grandparents in the second stage of ascent, conse- 
quently (since each of those four will have had four 
grandparents) sixteen in the third stage, consequently 
sixty-four in the fourth, consequently two hundred 
and fifty-six in the fifth, and so on, it follows that, 
long before you get to the Conquest, every man and 
woman then living in England will be wanted to make 
up the sum of my separate ancestors ; consequently 
you must take your ancestors out of the very same 
fund, or (if you are too proud for that) you must go 
without ancestors. So that, your ancestors being 
clearly mine, I have a right in law to call the whole 
' kit ' of them monsters. Quod erat demonstrandum. 
Really and upon my honor, it makes one, for the mo- 
ment, ashamed of one's descent ; one would wish to 
disinherit one's-self backwards, and (as Sheridan says 
in the ' Rivals ') to ' cut the connection.' Wordsworth 
has an admirable picture in ' Peter Bell ' of ' a snug 
party in a parlor ' removed into limhus patrum for their 
offences in the flesh : — 

' Cramming as they on earth were cramm'd ; 
All sipping wine, all sipping tea ; 
But, as you by their faces see. 
All silent, and all d d.' 

How well does that one word silent describe those 
venerable ancestral dinners — ' All silent ! ' Contrast 
this infernal silence of voice, and fury of eye, Avith the 
' risus amhilis,' the festivity, the social kindness, the 
music, the wine, the ' dulcis insania,' of a Roman 
* c<r,na.^ I mentioned four tests for determining what 



DINNER, REAL, AND EEPUXED, 229 

meal is, and what is not, dinner : wc may now add a 
fifth — viz., the spirit of festal joy and elegant enjoy- 
ment, of anxiety laid aside, and of honorable social 
pleasure put on like a marriage garment. 

And what caused the difference between our ances- 
tors and the Romans ? Simply this — the error of in- 
terposing dinner in the middle of business, thus court- 
ing all the breezes of angry feeling that may happen to 
blow from the business yet to come, instead of finish- 
ing, absolutely closing, the account with this world's 
troubles before you sit down. That unhappy in- 
terpolation ruined all. Dinner was an ugly little 
parenthesis between two still uglier clauses of a tee- 
totally ugly sentence. "Whereas, with us, their enlight- 
ened posterity, to whom they have the honor to be 
ancestors, dinner is a great re-action. There lies my 
conception of the matter. It grew out of the very ex- 
cess of the evil. When business was moderate, dinner 
was allowed to divide and bisect it. When it swelled 
into that vast strife and agony, as one may call it, that 
boils along the tortured streets of modern London or 
other capitals, men begin to see the necessity of an 
adequate counter-force to push against this overwhelm- 
ing torrent, and thus maintain the equilibrium. Were 
it not for the soft relief of a six o'clock dinner, the 
gentle demeanor succeeding to the boisterous hubbub 
of the day, the soft glowing lights, the wine, the intel- 
lectual conversation, life in London is now come to 
such a pass, that in two years all nerves would sink 
before it. But for this periodic re-action, the mc dern 
business which draws so cruelly on the brain, and so 
little on the hands, would overthrow that organ in all 
hut those of coarse organization. Dinner it is — 



230 DINNEK, KEAIi, AND KEPITTED. 

meaning by dinner the whole complexity of attendant 
circumstances — which saves the modern brain- work- 
ng man from going mad. 

This revolution as to dinner was the greatest iu 
virtue and value ever accomplished. In fact, those 
are always the most operative revolutions which are 
Drought about through social or domestic changes. A 
nation must be barbarous, neither could it have much 
intellectual business, Avhich dined in the morning. 
They could not be at ease in the morning. So much 
tnust be granted : every day has its separate quanlum, 
its dose of anxiety, that could not be digested as soon 
noon. No man will say it. He, therefore, avIio dined 
at noon, showed himself willing to sit down squalid 
as he was, with his dress unchanged, his cares not 
washed off. And what follows from that ? Why, that 
to him, to such a canine or cynical specimen of the 
genus homo, dinner existed only as a physical event, a 
mere animal relief, a purely carnal enjoyment. For in 
what, I demand, did this fleshly creature differ from 
the carrion crow, or the kite, or the vulture, or the 
cormorant ? A French judge, in an action upon a wa- 
ger, laid it down as law, that man only had a bouc/ie, 
all other animals a gueule : only with regard to the 
horse, in consideration of his beauty, nobility, use, 
and in honor of the respect with which man regarded 
him, by the courtesy of Christendom, he might be 
allowed to have a louche, and lils reproach of brutality, 
if not taken away, might thus be hidden. But surely, 
of the rabid animal who is caught dining at noonday, 
the homo ferus, who affronts the meridian sun like 
Thyestes and Atreus, by his inhuman meals, we are, 
by parity of reason, entitled to say, that he has a ' maw ' 



DINNEB, EEAL, AND REPUTED. ' 231 

(so has Milton's Death), but nothing resembling a 
stomach. And to this vile man a philosopher would 
say — ' Go away, sir, and come back to me two or 
three centuries hence, when you have learned to be a 
reasonable creature, and to make that physico-intellec- 
tual thing out of dinner which it was meant to be, and 
is capable of becoming.' In Henry VII. 's time the 
court dined at eleven in the forenoon. But even that 
hour was considered so shockingly late in the French 
court, that Louis XII. actually had his gray hairs 
brought down Avith sorrow to the grave, by changing 
his regular hour of half-past nine for eleven, in gallan- 
try to his young English bride. 1° He fell a victim to 
late hours in the forenoon. In Cromwell's time they 
dined at one p. m. One century and a half had car- 
ried them on by two hours. Doubtless, old cooks and 
scullions wondered what the world would come to 
next. Our French neighbors Avere in the same pre- 
dicament. But they far surpassed us in veneration 
for the meal. They actually dated from it. Dinner 
constituted the great era of the day. L'apres diner is 
almost the sole date which you find in Cardinal De 
Retz's memoirs of the Fronde. Dinner was their He- 
gira — dinner was their line in traversing the ocean of 
day : they crossed the equator when they dined. Our 
English Revolution came next ; it made some little 
difference, I have heard people say, in church and 
state ; I dare-say it did, like enough, but its great 
effects were perceived in dinner. People now dine at 
two. So dined Addison for his last thirty years ; so, 
through his entire life, dined Pope, whose birth was 
coeval with the Revolution. Precisely as the Rebel- 
lion of 1745 arose, did people (but obeorve, very great 



232 DINNEE, REAL, AND BEFITTED. 

people) advance to four p. m. Philosophers, who watch 
the ' semina rerum,' and the first symptoms of change, 
had perceived this alteration singing in the upper air 
like a coming storm some little time before. About 
the year 1740, Pope complains of Lady Suffolk's 
dining so late as four. Young people may bear those 
things, he observed ; but as to himself, now turned of 
fifty, if such things went on, if Lady Suffolk would 
adopt such strange hours, he must really absent him- 
self from Marble Hill. Lady Suff'olk had a right to 
please herself; he himself loved her. But, if she 
would persist, all which remained for a decayed poet 
was respectfully to cut his stick, and retire. Whether 
Pope ever put up with four o'clock dinners again, I 
have vainly sought to fathom. Some things advance 
continuously, like a flood or a fire, which always make 
an end of A, eat and digest it, before they go on to 
B. Other things advance per saltum — they do not 
silently cancer their way onwards, but lie as still as a 
snake after they have made some notable conquest, 
then, when unobserved, they make themselves up ' for 
mischief,' and take a flying bound onwards. Thus 
advanced Dinner, and by these fits got into the terri- 
tory of evening. And ever as it made a motion on- 
wards, it found the nation more civilized (else the 
change could not have been effected), and co-operated 
in raising them to a still higher civilization. The next 
relay on that line of road, the next repeating frigate, 
is Cowper in his poem on ' Conversation.' He speaks 
of four o'clock as still the elegant hour for dinner — 
the hour for the lautiores and the lepidi homines. 
Now this might be written about 1780, or a little 
earlier ; perhaps, therefore, just one generation after 



DINNER, REAL, AND REPUTED. 233 

Pope's Lady Suffolk. But then Cowper was livinc 
amongst the rural gentry, not in high life ; yet, again, 
Cowper was nearly connected by blood with the emi- 
nent Whig house of Cowper, and acknowledged as a 
kinsman. About twenty-five years after this, we may 
take Oxford as a good exponent of the national ad- 
vance. As a magnificent body of ' foundations,' en- 
dowed by kings, nursed by queens, and resorted to by 
the flower of the national youth, Oxford ought to be 
elegant and even splendid in her habits. Yet, on the 
other hand, as a grave seat of learning, and feeling the 
weight of her position in the commonwealth, she is 
slow to move ; she is inert as she should be, having 
the functions of resistance assigned to her against the 
popular instinct (surely active enough) of movement. 
Now, in Oxford, about 1804-5, there was a general 
move in the dinner hour. Those colleges who dined 
at three, of which there were still several, now began to 
dine at four : those who had dined at four, now trans- 
lated their hour to five. These continued good general 
hours till about Waterloo. After that era, six, which 
had been somewhat of a gala hour, was promoted to the 
fixed station of dinner-time in ordinary ; and there 
perhaps it will rest through centuries. For a more 
festal dinner, seven, eight, nine, ten, have all been in 
requisition since then; but I am not aware of any 
man's habitually dining later than ten p. m., except 
in that classical case recorded by Mr. Joseph Miller, 
of an Irishman who must have dined much later than 
ten, because his servant protested, when others were 
enforcing the dignity of their masters by the lateness 
of their dinner hours, that his master invariably dined 
' to-morrow.' 
20 



234 DINNEB, KEAI,, AND KEPTTTED. 

Were the Romans not as barbarous as our own an- 
cestors at one time ? Most certainly tbey were ; in 
their primitive ages theey took their coena at noon,^i 
that was before they had laid aside their barbarism ; 
before they shaved; it was during their barbarism, 
and in consequence of their barbarism, that they timed 
their cczna thus unseasonably. And this is made evi- 
dent by the fact, that, so long as they erred in the 
hour, they erred in the attending circumstances. At 
this period they had no music at dinner, no festal 
graces, and no reposing on sofas. They sat bolt up- 
right in chairs, and were as grave as our ancestors, as 
rabid, as libidinous in ogling the dishes, and doubtless 
as furiously in haste. 

With us the revolution has been equally complex. 
We do not, indeed, adopt the luxurious attitude of 
semi-recumbency ; our climate makes that less requi- 
site ; and, moreover, the Romans had no knives «.nd 
forks, which could scarcely be used in that recumbent 
posture ; they ate with then* fingers from dishes already 
cut up — whence the peculiar force of Seneca's ' post 
quod non sunt lavandse manus.' But, exactly in propor- 
tion as our dinner has advanced towards evening, have 
we and has that advanced in circumstances of elegance, 
of taste, of intellectual value. This by itself would be 
much. Infinite would be the gain for any people, that 
it had ceased to be brutal, animal, fleshly ; ceased to 
regard the chief meal of the day as a ministration only 
to an animal necessity ; that they had raised it to a 
higher oflice ; associated it with social and humanizing 
feelings, with manners, with graces moral and intel- 
lectual : moral in the self-restraint ; intellectual in the 
fact, notorious to all men, that the chief arenas for the 



DINNER, HEAL, AND REPUTED. 235 

easy display of intellectual power are at our dinner ta- 
bles. But dinner has now even a greater function ttaa 
this ; as the fervor of our day's business increases, 
dinner is continually more needed in its office of a 
great re-action. I repeat that, at this moment, but for 
the daily relief of dinner, the brain of all men who 
mix in the strife of capitals would be unhinged and 
thrown off its centre. 

If we should suppose the case of a nation taking 
three equidistant meals, all of the same material and 
the same quantity — all milk, for instance, all bread, 
or all rice — it would be impossible for Thomas 
Aquinas himself to say which was or was not dinner. 
The case would be that of the Eoman ancile which 
dropped from the skies ; to prevent its ever being 
stolen, the priests made eleven fac-similes of it, iu 
order that a thief, seeing the hopelessness of distin- 
guishing the true one, might let all alone. And the 
result was, that, in the next generation, nobody could 
point to the true one. But our dinner, the Roman 
cxna, is distinguished from the rest by far more than 
the hour ; it is distinguished by great functions, and 
by still greater capacities. It is already most benefi- 
cial ; if it saves (as I say it does) the nation from 
madness, it may become more so. 

In saying this, I point to the lighter graces of music, 
and conversation more varied, by which the Roman 
cccna was chiefly distinguished from our dinner. I am 
far from agreeing with Mr. Croly, that the Roman 
meal was more ' intellectual ' than ours. On the con- 
trary, ours is the more intellectual by much ; we have 
far greater knowledge, far greater means for making it 
Buch. In fact, the fault of our meal is- - that it is too 



236 DINNEB, EEAL, AND EEPUIED. 

intellectual ; of too severe a character ; too political ; 
too much, tending, in many hands, to disquisition. 
Reciprocation of question and answer, variety of topics, 
shifting of topics, are points not sufficiently cultivated. 
In all else I assent to the following passage from Mr. 
Croly's eloquent ' Salathiel : ' — 

' If an ancient Roman could start from his slumber 
into the midst of European life, he must look with 
scorn on its absence of grace, elegance, and fancy. 
But it is in its festivity, and most of all in its banquets, 
that he would feel the incurable barbarism of the 
Gothic blood. Contrasted Avith the fine displays that 
made the table of the Roman noble a picture, and 
threw over the indulgence of appetite the colors of the 
imagination, with what eyes must he contemplate the 
tasteless and commonplace dress, the coarse attendants, 
the meagre ornament, the want of mirth, music, and 
intellectual interest — the whole heavy machinery that 
converts the feast into the mere drudgery of devour- 



ing 



Thus far the reader knows already that I dissent 
violently ; and by looking back he will see a picture 
of our ancestors at dinner, in which they rehearse the 
very part in relation to ourselves, that Mr. Croly sup- 
poses all moderns to rehearse in relation to the Ro- 
mans ; but in the rest of the beautiful description, the 
positive, though not the comparative part, we must all 
concur : — 

' The guests before me were fifty or sixty splendidly 
dressed men' (they were in fact Titus and his staff, 
then occupied with the siege of Jerusalem), ' attended 
by a crowd of domestics, attired with scarcely less 
splendor ; for no man thought of coming to the ban- 



DINWEE, REAL, AND KEPUIED, 237 

qiict in the robes of ordinaiy life. The embroidered 
couches, themselves striking objects, allowed the ease 
of position at once delightful in the relaxing climates 
of the south, and capable of combining with every 
grace of the human figure. At a slight distance, the 
table loaded with plate glittering under a profusion of 
lamps, and surrounded by couches thus covered by 
rich draperies, was like a central som-ce of light radiat- 
ing in broad shafts of every brilliant hue. The Avealth 
of the patricians, and their intercourse with the Greeks, 
made them masters of the first performances of the 
arts. Copies of the most famous statues, and groups 
of sculpture in the precious metals ; trophies of victo- 
ries ; models of temples, were mingled with vases of 
flowers and lighted perfumes. Finally, covering and 
closing all, was a vast scarlet canopy, which combined 
the groups beneath to the eye, and threw the whole 
into the form that a painter would love.' 

Mr. Croly then goes on to insist on the intellectual 
embellishments of the Roman dinner ; their variety, 
their grace, their adaptation to a festive purpose. The 
truth is, our English imagination, more profound than 
the Roman, is also more gloomy, less gay, less riante. 
That accounts for our want of the gorgeous triclinium, 
with its scarlet draperies, and for many other difi'er- 
enccs both to the eye and to the understanding. But 
both we and the Romans agree in the main point : 
we both discovered the true purpose which dinner 
might serve — 1, to throw the grace of intellectual 
enjoyment over an animal necessity ; 2, to relieve and 
to meet by a benign antagonism the toil of brain inci- 
dent to high forms of social life. 

My object has been to point the eye to this fact ; to 



238 DINNER, REAL, AND REPUTED. 

show uses imperfectly suspected in a recurring accident 
of life ; to show a steady tendency to that consumma- 
tion, by holding up, as in a mirror, a series of changes, 
corresponding to our own series with regard to the 
same chief meal, silently going on in a great people of 
antiquity. 



NOTES. 

Note 1. Page 198. 
' In prynnct : ' — Milton's translation (somewhere in the 
• Paradise Regained ') of the technical phrase * in procinctu.' 

Note 2. Page 199. 
* Geologists know not:' — In man the sixtieth part of six thou- 
sand years is a very venerable age. But as to a planet, as to our 
little earth, instead of arguing dotage, six thousand years may 
have scarcely carried her beyond babyhood. Some people think 
she is cutting her first teeth ; some think her in her teens. But, 
seriously, it is a very interesting problem. Do the sixty centu- 
ries of our earth imply youth, maturity, or dotage ? 

Note 3. Page 200. 
'Everywhere the ancients went to bed, like good boys, from 
seven to nine o'clock : ' — As I am perfectly serious, I must beg 
the reader, who fancies any joke in all this, to consider what an 
immense diflercncc it must have made to the earth, considered as 
a steward of her own resources — whether great nations, in a pe- 
riod when their resources were so feebly developed, did, or did 
not, for many centuries, require candles; and, I may add, fire. 
The five heads of human expenditure are — 1. Food; 2. Shelter; 
3. Clothing; 4. Fuel; 6. Light. All were pitched on a lower scale 
in the Pagan era; and the two last were almost banished from 
ancient housekeeping. What a great relief this must have been 
to our good mother the earth ! who nt first was obliged to request 
of her children that they would settle round the Mediterranean. 
She could not even aflford them water, unless they would come 
and fetch it thsmselres out of a common tank or cistern. 

[239] 



240 NOIES. 



Note 4. Page 201. 
* The mane salutantes : ' — There can be no doubt that the 
levees of modern prinoes and ministers have been inherited from 
this ancient usage of Rome; one which belonged to Rome repub- 
lican, as well as Rome imperial. The fiction in our modern 
practice is — that we wait upon the lever, or rising of the prince. 
In France, at one era, this fiction was realized : the courtiers 
did really attend the king's dressing. And, as to the queen, 
even up to the Revolution, Marie Antoinette gave audience at her 
toilette. 

Note 5. Page 204. 
' Or again, " siccum pro biscocto, ut hodie vocamus, sume- 
mus ? " ' — It is odd enough that a scholar so complete as 
Salmasius, whom nothing ever escapes, should have overlooked 
so obvious an alternative as that of siccus in the sense of being 
without opsonium — Scotice, without ' kitchen.' 

Note 6. Page 206. 
' The whole amount of relief: ' — From which it appears how 
grossly Locke (see his ' Education ') was deceived in fancying 
that Augustus practised any remarkable abstinence in taking 
only a bit of bread and a raisin or two, by way of luncheon. 
Augustus did no more than most people did; secondly, he ab- 
stained only upon principles of luxury with a view to dinner ; 
and thirdly, for this dinner he never waited longer than up to 
four o'clock. 

Note 7. Page 212. 
' Mansiones : ' — The halts of the Roman legions, the station- 
ary places of repose which divided the marches, were so called. 

Note 8. Page 217. 
' The Everlasting Jew : ' — The German name for what we 
English call the Wandering Jew. The German imagination has 
been most stnick by the duration of the man's life, and his un- 
happy sanctity from death; the English, by the unrestingness of 
the man's life, his incapacity of repose. 



NOTES. 241 



Note 9. Page 223. 
* Immeasurable toga :' — It is very true that in the time of 
Augustus the toga had disappeared amongst the lowest plebs, 
and greatly Augustus was shocked at that spectacle. It is a very 
curious fact in itself, especially as expounding the main cause of 
the civil wars. Mere poverty, and the absence of bribery from 
Borne, whilst all popular competition for offices drooped, can 
alone explain this remarkable revolution of dress. 

Note 10. Page 231. 
' His young English Bride : ' — The case of an old man, or 
one reputed old, marrying a very girlish wife, is always too much 
for the gravity of histoi-y; and, rather than lose the joke, the 
historian prudently disguises the age, which, after all, in this 
case was not above fifty-four. And the very persons who insist 
on the late dinner as the proximate cause of death, elsewhere in- 
sinuate something more plausible, but not so decorously expressed. 
It is odd that this amiable prince, so memorable as having been 
a martyr to late dining at eleven A. m., was the same person who 
is so equally memorable for the noble, almost the sublime, answer 
about a King of France not remembering the wrongs of a Duke 
of Orleans. 

Note 11. Page 284. 
' Took their cana at noon : ' — And, by the way, in order to 
ehow how little cana had to do with any evening hour (though, 
in any age but that of our fathers, four in the afternoon would 
never have been thought an evening hour), the Roman gour- 
mands and bans vivants continued through the very last ages of 
Rome to take their cana, when more than usually sumptuous, at 
noon. This, indeed, all people did occasionally, just as we some- 
times give a dinner even now so early as four p. m., under the 
name of a breakfast. Those who took their ccena so early as 
this, were said de die canare — to begin dining from high day. 
That line in Horace — ' Ut jugulent homines, surgunt de nocte 
latrones ' — does not mean that the robbers rise when others 
are going to bed, viz., at nightfall, but at midnight. For, saya 
21 



242 NOTES. 

one of ihe three best scholars of this earth, de die, de node, 
mean from that hour which was most fully, most intensely day 
or night, viz., the centre, the meridian. This one fact is surely 
a clincher as to the question whether cana meant dinner or 
Bupper. 



ORTHOGRAPHIC MUTINEERS. 

WITH A SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE WORKS OF WALTEB 
SATAGE LANDOR. 

As we are all of us crazy when the wind sets in 
some particular quarter, let not Mr. Landor be angry 
with me for suggesting that he is outrageously crazy 
upon one solitary subject of spelling. It occurs to 
me, as a plausible solution of his fury upon this point, 
that perhaps in his earliest school-days, when it is 
understood that he was exceedingly pugnacioiis, he 
may have detested spelling, and (like Roberte the 
Deville') have found it more satisfactory for all par- 
ties, that when the presumptuous schoolmaster differed 
from him on the spelling of a Avord, the question 
between them should be settled by a stand-up fight. 
Both parties woidd have the victory at times : and 
if, according to Pope's expression, 'justice rul'd the 
ball,' the schoolmaster (who is always a villain) would 
be floored three times out of four ; no great matter 
whether wrong or not upon the immediate point of 
spelling discussed. It is in this way, viz., from the 
irregular adjudications upon litigated spelling, which 
must have arisen under such a mode of investigating 
the matter, that we account for Mr. Lander's being 
Bomctimes in the right, but too often (with regard to 

[243] 



214 OKTHOGKAPHIC MUTINEEKS. 

long words) egregiously in the wrong. As he grew 
stronger and tailor, he would be coming more and 
more amongst polysyllables, and more and more 
would be getting the upper hand of the schoolmaster ; 
so that at length he would have it all his own way ; 
one round would decide the turn-up ; and thencefor- 
wards his spelling would become frightful. Now, I 
myself detested spelling as much as all people ought 
to do, except Continental compositors, who have extra 
fees for doctoring the lame spelling of ladies and gen- 
tlemen. But, unhappily, I had no power to thump the 
schoolmaster into a conviction of his own absurdities; 
which, however, I greatly desired to do. Still, my 
nature, powerless at that time for any active recusancy, 
was strong for passive resistance ; and that is the 
hardest to conquer. I took one lesson of this infernal 
art, and then declined ever to take a second ; and in 
fact, I never did. Well I remember that unique morn- 
ing's experience. It was the first page of Entick's 
Dictionary that I had to get by heart ; a sweet sen- 
timental task ; and not, as may be fancied, the spelling 
only, but the horrid attempts of this depraved Entick 
to explain the supposed meaning of words that proba- 
bly had none ; many of these, it is my belief, Entick 
himself forged. Among the strange, grim-looking 
words, to whose acquaintance I was introduced on that 
unhappy morning, were abalienate and dblaqueation — 
most respectable words, I am fully persuaded, but so 
exceedingly retired in their habits, that I never once 
had the honor of meeting either of them in any book, 
pamphlet, journal, whether in prose or numerous 
verse, though haunting such society myself all my 
life, I also formed the acquaintance, at that time, of 



OETHOGRAPHIC MtJTINEEKS. 24,'» 

tlie word abacus, whicli, as a Latin word, I liaAc often 
used, but, as an Englisli one, I really never had occa- 
sion to spell, until this very moment. Yet, after all, 
what harm comes of such obstinate recusancy against 
ortliography ? I was an ' occasional conformist ; ' I 
confornacd for one morning, and never more. But, for 
all that, I spell as well as my neighbors; and I can 
spell allaqueation besides, which I suspect that some 
of them can not. 

My own spelling, therefore, went right, because I 
was left to nature, with strict neutrality on the part of 
the authorities. Mr. Landor's too often went wrong, 
because he was thrown into a perverse channel by his 
continued triumphs over the prostrate schoolmaster. 
To toss up, as it were, for the spelling of a word, by 
the best of nine rounds, inevitably left the impression 
that chance governed all ; and this accounts for the 
extreme capriciousness of Landor. 

It is a work for a separate dictionary in quarto to 
record all the proposed revolutions in spelling through 
which our English blood, either at home or in Ameri- 
ca, has thrown off, at times, the surplus energy that 
consumed it. I conceive this to be a sort of cutaneous 
affection, like nettle-rash, or ringworm, through Avhich 
the patient gains relief for his own nervous distraction, 
whilst, in fact, he does no harm to anybody : for usu- 
ally he forgets his own reforms, and if he should not, 
everybody else does. Not to travel back into the 
seventeenth century, and the noble army of short-hand 
writers who have all made war upon orthography, for 
secret purposes of their own, even in the last century, 
and in the present, what a list of eminent rebels againsl 
the spelling-book might be called up to answer for 



246 OKTHOGBAPHIC MUTINEERS. 

their wickedness at tlie bar of the Old Bailey, if any* 
body would be kind enough to naake it a felony ! 
CoAvper, for instance, too modest and too pensive to 
raise upon any subject an open standard of rebellion, 
yet, in quiet Olney, made a small emeute as to the 
word ' Grecian.' Everybody else was content with 
one ' e ; ' but he recollecting the cornucopia of e's, 
which Providence had thought fit to empty upon the 
mother word Greece, deemed it shocking to disinherit 
the poor child of its hereditary wealth, and wrote it, 
therefore, Greecian throughout his Homer. Such a 
modest reform the sternest old Tory could not find in 
his heart to denounce. But some contagion must have 
collected about this word Greece ; for the next man, 
who had much occasion to use it — viz., Mitford^ — 
who wrote that ' History of Greece ' so eccentric, and 
so eccentrically praised by Lord Byron, absolutely 
took to spelling like a heathen, slashed right and left 
against decent old English words, until, in fact, the 
whole of Entick's Dictionary (ablaqueation and all) 
was ready to swear the peace against him. Mitford, 
in course of time, slept with his fathers ; his grave, I 
trust, not haunted by the injured words Avhom he had 
tomahawked ; and, at this present moment, the Bishop 
of St. David's reigneth in his stead. His Lordship, 
bound over to episcopal decorum, has hitherto been 
sparing in his assaults upon pure old English words : 
but one may trace the insurrectionary taint, passing 
down from Cowper through the word Grecian, in 
many of his Anglo-Hellenic forms. For instance, he 
insists on our saying — not Heracleidce and PelopidcB, 
as we all used to do — but Heracleids and Pelopids. 
A list of my Lord's barbarities, in many other cases, 



OaTHOGEAPHIC MUTINEERS. 247 

upon iinprotected words, poor shivering aliens that fall 
into his power, when thrown upon the coast of his dio- 
cese, I had — had, I say, for, alas ! fuit Ilium. 

Yet, really, one is ashamed to linger on cases so 
mild as those, coming, as one does, in the order of 
atrocity, to Elphinstone, to Noah Webster, a Yankee 
— which word means, not an American, but that 
separate order of Americans, growing in Massachu- 
setts, Rhode Island, or Connecticut, in fact, a New 
Englander 3 — and to the rabid Ritson. Noah would 
naturally have reduced us all to an antediluvian sim- 
plicity. Shem, Ham, and Japheth, probably separated 
in consequence of perverse varieties in spelling ; so 
that orthographical unity might seem to him one con- 
dition for preventing national schisms. But as to the 
rabid Ritson, who can describe his vagaries ? AVhat 
great arithmetician can furnish an index to his absur- 
dities, or what great decipherer furnish a key to the 
principles of these absurdities ? In his very title- 
pages, nay, in the most obstinate of ancient techni- 
calities, he showed his cloven foot to the astonished 
reader. Some of his many works were printed in 
Pall- Mall ; now, as the world is pleased to pronounce 
that word Pel- Mel, thus and no otherwise (said Rit- 
son) it shall be spelled for ever. Whereas, on the 
contrary, some men would have said : The spelling is 
well enough, it is the public pronunciation which is 
wrong. This ought to be Paul- Maul ; or, perhaps — 
agreeably to the sound which we give to the a in such 
words as what, quantity, xoant — still better, and with 
more gallantry, Poll-Moll. The word Mr., again, in 
Ritson's reformation, must have astonished the Post- 
office. He insisted that this cabalistical-looking form. 



248 OKTHOGEAPHIC MUTINEERS. 

whicli might as reasonably be translated into monsUTf 
was a direct fraud on the national language, quite as 
bad as clipping the Queen's coinage. How, then, 
should it be written ? Reader ! reader ! that you will 
ask such a question ! mister, of course ; and mind that 
you put no capital m ; unless, indeed, you are speak- 
ing of some great gun, some mister of misters, such as 
Mr. Pitt of old, or perhaps a reformer of spelling. 
The plural, again, of such words as romance, age, 
horse, he wrote romance'es, agees, horsees ; and upon 
the following equitable consideration, that, inasmuch 
as the e final in the singular is mute, that is, by a 
general vote of the nation has been allowed to retire 
upon a superannuation allowance, it is abominable to 
call it back upon active service — like the modern 
Chelsea pensioners — as must be done, if it is to bear 
the whole weight of a separate syllable like ces. Con- 
sequently, if the nation and Parliament mean to keep 
faith, they are bound to hire a stout young e to run in 
the traces with the old original e, taking the whole 
work off his aged shoulders. Volumes would not suf- 
fice to exhaust the madness of Pitson upon this sub- 
ject. And there was this peculiarity in his madness 
over and above its clamorous ferocity, that being no 
classical scholar (a meagre self-taught Latinist, and 
no Grecian at all), though profound as a black-letter 
scholar, he cared not one straw for ethnographic rela- 
tions of the words, nor unity of analogy, which are the 
principles that generally have governed reformers of 
spelling. He was an attorney, and moved constantly 
under the monomaniac idea that an action lay on be- 
half of the misused letters; mutes, liquids, vowels, and 
diphthongs, against somebody or other (John Doe, was 



OKTHOGKAPHIC MUTINEEKS. 249 

it, or Richard Roe ?) for trespass on any rights of theira 
■which an attorney might trace, and of course for any 
direct outrage upon their persons. Yet no man was 
more systematically an offender in both ways than 
himself ; tying up one leg of a quadruped word, and 
forcing it to run upon three ; cutting off noses and 
ears, if he fancied that equity required it : and living 
in eternal hot water with a language which he pre- 
tended eternally to protect. 

And yet all these fellows were nothing in compari- 
son of Mr. ^ Pinkcrton. The most of these men did 
but ruin the national spelling ; but Pinkerton — the 
monster Pinkcrton — proposed a revolution which 
would have left us nothing to spell. It is almost in- 
credible — if a book regularly printed and published, 
bought and sold, did not remain to attest the fact — 
that this horrid barbarian seriously proposed, as a 
glorious discovery for refining oiir language, the fol- 
lowing plan. All people were content with the com- 
pass of the English language : its range of expression 
W'as equal to anything ; but, unfortunately, as com- 
pared Avith the sweet, orchestral languages of the 
south — Spanish the stately, and Italian the lovely — 
it wanted rhythmus and melody. Clearly, then, the 
one supplementary grace, which it remained for mod- 
em art to give, is that every one should add at discre- 
tion and a, ino and ano, to the end of the English 
words. The language, in its old days, should be 
taught struttare struttissimamente. As a specimen, 
Mr. Pinkerton favored us Avith his own version of a 
famous passage in Addison, viz., ' The Vision of 
Mirza.' The passage, which begins thus, ' As I sat 
on the top of a rock,' being translated into, ' As I satto 



250 OKTHOGEAPHIC MUTINEERS. 

on the toppino of a rocko,' &c. But luckilissime this 
proposalio of tlie ahsurdissimo Pinkertonio ^ ^vas not 
adoptado by anylody-ini wTiatever-ano. 

Mr. Landor is more learned, and probably more 
consistent in bis assaults upon tbe established spelling 
than most of these elder reformers. But thai does not 
make him either learned enough or consistent enough. 
He never ascends into Anglo-Saxon, or the many cog- 
nate languages of the Teutonic family, which is indis- 
pensable to a searching inquest upon our language ; 
he does not put forward in this direction even the 
slender qualifications of Home Tooke. But Greek 
and Latin are quite unequal, when disjoined from the 
elder wheels in our etymological system, to the work- 
ing of the total machinery of the English language. 
Mr. Landor proceeds upon no fixed principles in his 
changes. Sometimes it is on the principle of internal 
analogy within itself, that he would distort or retrotort 
the language ; sometimes on the principle of external 
analogy with its roots ; sometimes on the principle of 
euphony, or of metrical convenience. Even within 
such principles he is not uniform. All well-built 
English scholars, for instance, know that the word 
fe.dlty cannot be made into a dissyllable : trisyllabic 
it ever was^ with the elder poets — Spenser, Milton, 
&c. ; and so it is amongst all the modern poets who 
have taken any pains with their English studies : e. g. 

• The eagle, lord of land and sea, 
Stoop'd — down to pay him fe-al-ty.' 

It is dreadful to hear a man say feal-ty in any case ; 
but here it is luckily impossible. Now, Mr. Landor 
generally is correct, and trisects the word ; but once, 



ORTHOGKAPHIC MUTINEERS. 251 

at least, he bisects it. I complain, besides, that Mr. 
Landor, in urging the authority of Milton for ortho- 
graphic innovations, does not always distinguish as to 
Milton's motives. It is true, as he contends, that, in 
Bome instances, Milton reformed the spelling in obedi- 
ence to the Italian precedent : and certainly without 
blame ; as in sovran, sdeign, which ought not to be 
printed (as it is) with an elision before the s, as if 
short for disdain; but in other instances Milton's mo- 
tive had no reference to etymology. Sometimes it was 
this. In Milton's day the modern use of italics was 
nearly unknown. Everybody is aware that, in our 
authorized version of the Bible, published in Milton's 
infancy, italics are never once used for the purpose of 
emphasis — but exclusively to indicate such words or 
auxiliary forms as, though implied and virtually pres- 
ent in the original, are not textually expressed, but 
must be so in English, from the different genius of 
the language.'^ Now, this want of a proper technical 
resource amongst the compositors of the age, for indi- 
cating a peculiar stress upon the word, evidently drove 
Milton into some perplexity for a compensatory contri- 
vance. It was unusually requisite for him, with his 
elaborate metrical system and his divine ear, to have 
an art for throwing attention upon his accents, and 
upon his muffling of accents. When, for instance, he 
wishes to direct a bright jet of emphasis upon the pos- 
sessive pronoun their, he writes it as we now write it. 
But, when he wishes to take off the accent, he writes 
it thir.^ Like Ritson, he writes therefor and wherefor 
without the final e ; not regarding the analogy, but 
singly the metrical quantity : for it was shocking to 
his classical feeling that a sound so short to the car 



252 OETHOGEAPHIC MUTINEEK8. 

shotild be represented to tlie eye by so long a combi- 
nation as fore ; and the more so, because uneducated 
people did then, and do now, often equilibrate the 
accent between the two syllables, or rather m.ake the 
quantity long in both syllables, whilst giving an over- 
balance of the accent to the last. The ' Paradise Lost,* 
being printed during Milton's blindness, did not receive 
the full and consistent benefit of his spelling reforms, 
which (as I have contended) certainly arose partly in 
the imperfections of typography at that sera ; but such 
changes as had happened most to impress his ear with 
a sense of their importance, he took a special trouble, 
even under all the disadvantages of his darkness, to 
have rigorously adopted. He must have astonished 
the compositors, though not quite so much as the 
tiger-cat Ritson or the Mr. (viz. monster) Pinkerton — 
each after his kind — astonished their compositors. 

But the caprice of Mr. Landor is shown most of all 
upon Greek names. Nous autres say ' Aristotle,' and 
are quite content with it until we migrate into some 
extra-superfine world ; but this title will not do for 
/iim ; ' Aristotles ' it must be. And why so ? Be- 
cause, answers the Landor, if once I consent to say 
Aristotle, then I am pledged to go the whole hog; 
and perhaps the next man I meet is Empedocles, 
whom, in that case, I must call Empedocle. Well, do 
so. Call him Empedocle ; it will not break his back, 
which seems broad enough. But, now, mark the con- 
tradictions in which Mr. Landor is soon landed. He 
says, as everybody says, Terence, and not Terentius, 
Horace, and not Horatius ; but he must leave ofi" such 
horrid practices, because he dares not call Lucretius by 
the analogous name of Lucrece, since that would be 



ORTHOGRAPHIC MTTTIKEERS. 253 

putting a she instead of a lie ; nor Propertius by the 
name of Properce, because that would be speaking 
French instead of English. Next he says, and con- 
tinually he says, Virgil for Virgilius. But, on that 
principle, he ought to say Valer for Valerius ; and yet 
again he ought not : because as he says Tully and not 
Tull for TuUius, so also is he bound, in Christian 
equity, to say Valery for Valer ; but he cannot say 
either Valer or Valery. So here we are in a mess. 
Thirdly, I charge him with saying Ovid for Ovidius: 
which I do, which everybody does, but which he mast 
not do : for if he means to persist in that, then, upon 
his own argument from analogy, he must call Didius 
Julianus by the shocking name of Did, which is the 
same thing as Tit — since T is D soft. Did was a 
very great man indeed, and for a very short time 
indeed. Probably Did was the only man that ever 
bade for an empire, and no mistake, at a public auc- 
tion. Think of Did's bidding for the Roman empire ; 
nay, think also of Did's having the lot actually 
knocked down to him ; and of Did's going home to 
dinner with the lot in his pocket. It makes one per- 
spire to think that, if the reader or myself had been 
living at that time, and had been prompted by some 
whim within us to bid against him — that is, he or I 
— should actually have come down to posterity by the 
abominable name of Anti-Did. All of us in England 
say Livy when speaking of the great historian, not 
Livius. Yet Livius Andronicus it would be impos- 
sible lo indulge with that brotherly name of Livy. 
Marcus Antonius is called — not by Shakspeare only, 
but by all the world — Mark Antony ; but who is it 
that ever called Marcus Brutus by the affectionate 



254 OBXHOGKAPHIC MUXINEEKS. 

name of Mark Brute ? ' Keep your distance,' -we say 
to that very doubtful brute, ' and expect no pet names 
from us.' Finally, apply the principle of abbreviation, 
involved in the names of Pliny, Livy, Tully,-all sub- 
stituting y for ius, to Marius — that grimmest of grim 
visions that rises up to us from the phantasmagoria of 
Roman history. Figure to yourself, reader, that trucu- 
lent face, trenched and scarred with hostile swords, 
canying thunder in its ominous eye-brows, and fright- 
ening armies a mile off with its scowl, being saluted 
by the tenderest of feminine names, as ' My Mary.' 

Not only, therefore, is Mr. Landor inconsistent in 
these innovations, but the innovations themselves, sup- 
posing them all harmonized and established, would 
but plough up the landmarks of old hereditary feel- 
ings. We learn oftentimes, by a man's bearing a 
good-natured sobriquet amongst his comrades, that he 
is a kind-hearted, social creature, popular with them 
all ! And it is an illustration of the same tendency, 
that the scale of popularity for the classical authors 
amongst our fathers, is registered tolerably well, in a 
gross general way, by the difference between having 
and not having a familiar name. If we except the first 
Caesar, the mighty Cains Julius, who was too majestic 
to invite familiarity, though too gracious to have 
repelled it, there is no author Avhom our forefathers 
loved, but has won a sort of Christian name in the 
land. Homer, and Hesiod, and Pindar, we all say ; 
we cancel the alien us ; but we never say Theocrit for 
Theocritus. Anacreon remains rigidly Grecian marble ; 
but that is only because his name is not of a plastic 
form — else everybody loves the sad old fellow. The 
Bame bar to familiarity existed in the names of the 



ORTHOGBAPHIC MUTINEERS. 255 

tragic poets, except perhaps for JEschylus ; who, 
however, like Caesar, is too awful for a caressing 
name. But Roman names were, generally, more 
flexible. Livy and Sallust have ever been favorites 
with men ; Livy with everybody ; Sallust, in a degree 
that may be called extravagant, with many celebrated 
Frenchmen, as the President des Brosses, and in our 
own days with M. Lerminicr, a most eloquent and 
original writer (' Ettides Historiques ') ; and two 
centuries ago, with the greatest of men, John Milton, 
in a degree that seems to me absolutely mysterious. 
These writers are baptized into our society — have 
gained a settlement in our parish : when you call a 
man Jack, and not Mr. John, it's plain you like him. 
But, as to the gloomy Tacitus, our fathers liked him 
not. He was too vinegar a fellow for them ; nothing 
hearty or genial about him ; he thought ill of every- 
body ; and we all suspect that, for those times, he was 
perhaps the worst of the bunch himself. Accordingly, 
this Tacitus, becaiise he remained so perfectly tacit for 
our jolly old forefathers' ears, never slipped into the 
name Tacit for their mouths ; nor ever will, I predict, 
for the mouths of posterity. Coming to the Bomau 
poets, I must grant that three great ones, viz., Lucre- 
tius, Statins, and Valerius Flaccus, have not been 
complimented with the freedom of our city, as they 
should have been, in a gold box. I regret, also, the 
ill fortune, in this respect, of Catullus, if he was 
really the author of that grand headlong dithyrambic, 
the Atys : he certainly ought to have been ennobled 
by the title of Catull. Looking to very much of his 
writings, much more 1 regret the case of Plautus ; and 
I am sure that if her Majesty woiild warrant his bear- 



256 OE.THOGBAPHIC MUIINEEKS. 

ing the name and anns of Plant in all time coming, it 
would gratify many of us. As to the rest, or those 
that anybody cares about, Horace, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, 
Martial, Claudian, all have been raised to the peerage. 
Ovid was the great poetic favorite of Milton ; and not 
without a philosophic ground : his festal gayety, and 
the brilliant velocity of his aurora horealis intellect, 
forming a deep natural equipoise to the mighty gloom 
and solemn planetary movement in the mind of the 
other ; like the wedding of male and female counter- 
parts. Ovid was, therefore, rightly Milton's favorite. 
But the favorite of all the world is Horace. Were 
there ten peerages, were there three blue ribbons, 
vacant, he ought to have them all. 

Besides, if Mr. Landor could issue decrees, and even 
harmonize his decrees for reforming our Anglo-Grecian 
spelling — decrees which no Council of Trent could 
execute, without first rebuilding the Holy Office of the 
Inquisition — still there would be little accomplished. 
The names of all continental Europe are often in con- 
fusion, from different causes, when Anglicized : Ger- 
man names are rarely spelled rightly by the laity of 
our isle : Polish and Hungarian never. Many foreign 
towns have in England what botanists would call trivial 
names ; Leghorn, for instance, Florence, Madrid, Lis- 
bon, Vienna, Munich, Antwerp, Brussels, the Hague, 
— all unintelligible names to the savage Continental 
native. Then, if Mr. Landor reads as much of Anglo- 
Indian books as I do, he must be aware that, for many 
years back, they have all been at sixes and sevens ; so 
that now most Hindoo words are in masquerade, and 
we shall soon require English pundits in Leadenhall 
Street.^ How does he like, for instance, Sipahee, tha 



ORTHOGKAPHIC MUTINEERS. 257 

modei-n form for Sepoy ? or Tepheen for Tijfm 7 At 
tbis rate of metamorpliosis, absorbing even tbe conse- 
crated names of social meals, we sball soon cease to 
understand what that disjune was whicb bis sacred 
Majesty graciously accepted at Tillietudlcm. But even 
elder forms of oriental speech are as little harmonized 
in Christendom. A few leagues of travelling make 
the Hebrew unintelligible to us ; and the Bible be- 
comes a Delphic mystery to Englishmen amongst the 
countrymen of Luther. Solomon is there called Sala- 
mo ; Samson is called Simson, though probably he 
never published an edition of Euclid. Nay, even in 
this native isle of ours, you may be at cross purposes 
on the Bible with your own brother. I am, myself, 
next door neighbor to "Westmoreland, being a Lan- 
cashire man ; and, one day, I was talking with a 
Westmoreland farmer, whom, of course, I ought to 
have understood very well ; but I had no chance with 
him : for I could not make out who that No was, con- 
cerning whom or concerning which, he persisted in 
talking. It seemed to me, froni the context, that No 
must be a man, and by no means a chair ; but so very 
negative a name, you perceive, furnished no positive- 
hints for solving the problem. I said as much to the 
farmer, who stared in stupefaction. ' What,' cried 
he, ' did a far-lam' d man, like you, fresh from Oxford, 
never hear of No, an old gentleman that should have 
been drowned, but was not, when all his folk were 
dro\Tned ? ' ' Never, so help me Jupiter,' was my 
reply : ' never heard, of him to this hour, any more 
than of Yes, an old gentleman that should have been 
hanged, but was not, when all his folk were hanged. 
Populous No — I had read of in the Prophets ; but 
22 



258 ORTHOGKAPHIC MXTTINEEES. 

that was not an old gentleman.' It turned out that 
the farmer and all his compatriots in bonny Martindale 
had been taught at the parish school to rob the Patri- 
arch Noah of one clear moiety appertaining in fee 
simple to that ancient name. But afterwards I found 
that the farmer was not so entu-ely absurd as he had 
seemed. The Septuagint, indeed, is clearly against 
him; for there, as plain as a pikestaff, the farmer 
might have read Nois. But, on the other hand, Pope, 
not quite so great a scholar as he was a poet, yet still 
a fair one, always made Noah into a monosyllable ; 
and that seems to argue an old English usage ; though 
I really believe Pope's reason for adhering to such an 
absurdity was with a prospective view to the rhymes 
hloiv, or row, or stow (an important idea to the Ark), 
which struck him as likely words, in case of any call 
for writing about Noah. 

The long and the short of it is — that the whole 
world lies in heresy or schism on the subject of orthog- 
raphy. All climates alike groan under heterography. 
It is absolutely of no use to begin with one's own 
grandmother in such labors of reformation. It is toil 
thrown away : and as nearly hopeless a task as the 
proverb insinuates that it is to attempt a reformation in 
that old lady's mode of eating eggs. She laughs at 
one. She has a vain conceit that she is able, out of 
her own proper resources, to do both, viz., the spelling 
and the eating of the eggs. And all that remains for 
philosophers, like Mr. Landor and myself, is — to turn 
away in sorrow rather than in anger, dropping a silent 
tear for the poor old lady's infatuation. 



NOTES. 



Note 1. Page 243. 
• Roberte the Deville : ' — See the old metrical romance of that 
name : it belongs to the fourteenth centui'y, and was printed 
some thirty years ago, vrith wood engravings of the illuminations. 
Koberte, however, took the liberty of murdering his schoolmaster. 
But could he well do less ? Being a reigning Duke's son, and 
after the rebellious schoolmaster had said — 

' Sir, ye bee too bolde : 
And therewith tooke a rodde hymfor to chaste.' 

Upon which the meek Robin, without using any bad language as 
the schoolmaster had done, simply took out a long dagger ' hym 
for to chaste,' which he did effectually. The schoolmaster gave 
no bad language after that. 

Note 2. Page 246. 
Mitford, who was the brother of a man better known than him- 
self to the public eye, viz., Lord Redesdale, may be considered a 
very unfortunate author. His work upon Greece, which Lord 
Byron celebrated for its 'wrath and its partiality, really had 
those merits : choleric it was in excess, and as entirely partial, 
as nearly perfect in its injustice, as human infirmity would 
allow. Nothing is truly perfect in this shocking world ; absolute 
injustice, alas ! the perfection of wrong, must not be looked for 
until we reach some high Platonic form of polity. Then shall we 
revel and bask in a vertical sun of iniquity. Meantime, I will 
say — that to satisfy all bilious and unreasonable men, a better 
historian of Greece, than Mitford, could not be fancied. And 
yet, at the very moment when he was stepping into his harvest 

[259] 



260 



of popularity, down comes one of those omnivorous Germans that, 
by reading eyerything and a trifle besides, contrive to throw 
really learned men — and perhaps better thinkers than them- 
seves — into the shade. Ottfried Mueller, with other archaeolo- 
gists and travellers into Hellas, gave new aspects to the very 
purposes of Grecian history. Do you hear, reader ? not new 
answers, but new questions And Mitford, that was gradually 
displacing the unlearned Gillies, &c., was himself displaced by 
those who intrigued with Germany. His other work on ' the 
Harmony of Language,' though one of the many that attempted, 
and the few that accomplished, the distinction between accent and 
quantity, or learnedly appreciated the metrical science of Milton, 
was yet, in my hearing, pronounced utterly intelligible by the 
hest practical commentator on Milton, viz., the best reproducer 
of his exquisite effects in blank verse, that any generation since 
Milton has been able to show. Mr. Mitford was one of the many 
accomplished scholars that are ill-used. Had he possessed the 
splendid powers of the Landor, he would have raised a clatter 
on the armor of modern society, such as Samson threatened to 
the giant Harapha. For, in many respects, he resembled the 
Landor : he had much of his learning — he had the same exten- 
sive access to books and influential circles in great cities — the 
Bame gloomy disdain of popular falsehoods or commonplaces — 
and the same disposition to run a-muck against all nations, lan- 
guages, and spelling-books. 

Note 3. Page 247. 
* In fact, a JSTew Englander.' — This explanation, upon a 
matter familiar to the well-informed, it is proper to repeat occa- 
sionally, because we English exceedingly perplex and confound 
the Americans by calling, for instance, a Virginian or a Kentuck 
by the name of Yankee, whilst that term was originally intro 
duced as antithetic to these more southern States. 

Note 4. Page 249. 

Pinkerton published one of his earliest volumes, under this 

title — ' Rimes, by Mr. Pinkerton,' not having the fear of Ritson 

before his eyes. And, for once, we have reason to thank Ritson 

fcr his remark — that the form Mr. might just as well be read 



NOTES. 261 

Monster. Pinkerton in this point was a perfect monster. As 
to the word Rimes, instead of lihymes, he had something to 
stand upon; the Greek rythmos was certainly the remote foun- 
tain; but the proximate fountain must have been the Italian 
rima. 

Note 5. Page 250. 
The most extravagant of all experiments on language ia 
brought forward in the ' Letters of Literature, by Robert Heron.' 
But Robert Heron is a pseudonyme for John Pinkerton ; and I 
have been told that Pinkerton's motive for assuming it was — 
because Heron had been the maiden name of his mother. Poor 
lady, she would have stared to find herself, in old age, trans- 
formed into Mistressiaa Heronilla. What most amuses one in 
pursuing the steps of such an attempt at refinement, is its recep- 
tion by ' Jack ' in the navy. 

Note 6. Page 250. 

• It ever was ' — and, of course, being (as there is no need to 
tell Mr. Lander) a form obtained by contraction from fidelita$. 

Note 7. Page 251. 
Of this a ludicrous illustration is mentioned by the writer 
once known to the public as Trinity Jones. Some young cler- 
gyman, unacquainted with the technical use of italics by the 
original compositors of James the First's Bible, on coming to the 
27th verse, chap. xiii. of 1st Kings, 'And he' (viz., the old 
prophet of Bethel) ' spake to his sons, saying, Saddle me the 
ass. And they saddled Aim ; ' (where the italic him simply 
meant that this word was involved, but not expressed, in the 
original,) read it, 'And they saddled Hisi ;' as though these 
undutiful sons, instead of saddling the donkey, had saddled the 
old prophet. In fact, the old gentleman's directions are not 
quite without an opening for a filial misconception, if the reader 
examines them as closely as I examine words. 

Note 8. Page 251. 
He uses this and similar artifices, in fact, as the damper 
in a modern piano-forte, for modyfying the swell of the intona- 
tion. 



262 NOTES. 



Note 9, Page 256. 
The reasons for this anarchy in the naturalization of Eastern 
words are to be sought in three causes : 1. In national rival- 
ships : French travellers in India, like Jacquemont, &c., as they 
will not adopt our English First Meridian, will not, of course, 
adopt our English spelling. In one of Paul Richter's novels a 
man assumes the First Meridian to lie generally, not through 
Greenwich, but through his own skull, and always through hia 
own study. I have myself long suspected the Magnetic Pole to 
lie under a friend's wine-cellar, from the vibrating movement 
which I have remarked constantly going on in his cluster of keys 
towards that particular point. Really, the French, like Sir 
Anthony Absolute, must ' get an atmosphere of their own,' such 
is their hatred to holding anything in common with us. 2. They 
are to be sought in local Indian differences of pronunciation. 3. 
In the variety of our own British population — soldiers, mission- 
aries, merchants, who are unlearned or half-learned — scholars, 
really learned, but often fantastically learned, and lastly (as you 
may swear) young ladies — anxious, above all things, to mysti^ 
us outside barbarians. 



SORTILEGE ON BEHALE OF THE GLAS- 
GOW ATHEN^UM. 

Suddenly, about the middle of February, I re- 
ceived a request for some contribution of my own 
proper writing to a meditated Album of the Glasgow 
Athenaeum. What was to be done? The 13th of the 
month had already dawned before the request reached 
me ; ' return of post ' was the sharp limitation notified 
within which my communication must revolve ; whilst 
the request itself was dated Feb. 10 : so that already 
three 'returns of post' had finished their brief career 
on earth. I am not one of those people who, in respect 
to bread, insist on the discretionary allowance of 
Paris ; but, in respect to time, I do. Positively, for 
all efi"orts of thought I must have time d discretion. 
In this case, now, all discretion was out of the ques- 
tion ; a mounted jockey, in the melee of a Newmarket 
Btart, might as well demand time for meditation on the 
philosophy of racing. There was clearly no resource 
available but one ; and it was this : — In my study I 
have a bath, large enough to swim in, provided the 
swimmer, not being an ambitious man, is content with 
going a-head to the extent of six inches at the utmost. 
This bath, having been superseded (as regards its 
original purpose) by another mode of bathing, has 
yielded a secondary service to me as a reservoir for my 

[263] 



264 SOETILEGE ON BEHAIiF OF THE 

MSS. Filled to the brim it is by papers of all sorts 
and sizes. Every paper written hy me, to vcvQ,for me, 
of or concerning me, and, finally, against me, is to be 
found, after an impossible search, in this capacious 
'repe;.-tory. Those papers, by the way, that come under 
the last (or hostile) subdivision, are chiefly composed 
by shoemakers and tailors — an affectionate class of 
men, who stick by one to the last like pitch-plasters. 
One admires this fidelity ; but it shows itself too often 
in waspishness, and all the little nervous irritabilities 
of attachment too ardent. They are wretched if they 
do not continually hear what one is ' about,' what one 
is 'up to,' and which way one is going to travel. Me, 
because I am a political economist, they plague for my 
private opinions on the currency, especially on that 
part of it which consists in bills at two years after 
date ; and they always want an answer by return of 
post. "What the deuce I one can't answer everyhodij 
by return of post. Now, from this reservoir I resolved 
to draw some paper for the use of the Athenaeum. It 
was my fixed determination that this Institution should 
receive full justice, so far as human precautions could 
secure it. Four dips into the bath I decreed that the 
Athenaeum should have ; whereas an individual man, 
however hyperbolically illustrious, could have had but 
one. On the other hand, the Athenaeum must really 
content itself with what fortune might send, and not 
murmur at me as if I had been playing with loaded 
dice. To cut oS" all pretence for this allegation, I 
requested the presence of three young ladies, haters 
of everything unfair, as female attorneys, to watch the 
proceedings on behalf of the Athenaeum, to see that 
the dipping went on correctly, and also to advise the 



GLASGOW ATHEN^UM. 265 

court in case of any difficulties arising. At 6 p. m. 
all was reported right for starting in my study. The 
bath had been brilliantly illuminated from above, so 
that no tricks could be played in that quarter ; and the 
young man who was to execute the dips had finished 
dressing in a new potato sack, with holes cut through 
the bottom for his legs. Now, as the sack was tied 
with distressing tightness about his throat, leaving 
only a loop-hole for his right arm to play freely, it is 
clear that, however sincerely fraudulent in his inten- 
tions, and in possible collusion with myself, he could 
not assist me by secreting any papers about his person, 
or by any other knavery that we might wish to perpe- 
trate. The young ladies having taken their seats in 
stations admirably chosen for overlooking the move- 
ments of the young man and myself, the proceedings 
opened. The inaugural step was made in a neat 
speech from myself, complaining that I was the object 
of unjust suspicions, and endeavoring to re-establish 
my character for absolute purity of intentions ; but, I 
regret to say, ineffectually. This angered me, and I 
declared with some warmth, that in the bath, but 
whereabouts I could not guess, there lay a particular 
paper which I valued as equal to the half of my king- 
dom ; ' but for all that,' I went on, ' if our hon. friend 
in the potato sack should chance to haul up this very 
paper, I am resolved to stand by the event, yes, in that 
case, to the half of my kingdom I will express my in- 
terest in the Institution. Should even that prize be 
drawn, out of this house it shall pack off to Glasgow 
this very night.' Upon this, the leader of the attor- 
neys, whom, out of honor to Shakspeare, I may as 
well call Portia, chilled my enthusiasm disagreeably by 
23 



266 



SOKTILEGE ON BEHA3 



saying — 'There was no occasion for any extra zeal on 
my part in such, an event, since, as to packing out of 
this house to Glasgow, she and her learned sisters 
would take good care that it did ; ' — in fact, I was to 
have no merit whatever I did. Upon this, by way of 
driving away the melancholy caused by the obstinate 
prejudice of the attorneys, I called for a glass of wine, 
and, turning to the west, I drank the health of the 
Athenaeum, under the allegoric idea of a young lady 
about to come of age and enter upon the enjoyment 
of her estates. ' Here's to your prosperity, my dear 
lass,' I said ; ' you're very young — but that's a fault 
which, according to the old Greek adage, is mending 
every day ; and I'm sure you'll always continue as 
amiable as you are now towards strangers in distress 
for books and journals. Never grow churlish, my 
dear, as some of your sex are ' (saying which, I looked 
savagely at Portia). And then, I made the signal to 
the young man for getting to work — Portia's eyes, as 
I noticed privately, brightening like a hawk's. ' Pre- 
pare to dip ! ' I called aloud ; and soon after — ' Dip ! ' 
At the ' prepare,^ Potato-sack went on his right knee 
(his face being at right angles to the bath) ; at the 
' Dip ! ' he plunged his right arm into the billowy 
ocean of papers. For one minute he worked amongst 
them as if he had been pulling an oar; and then, at 
the peremptory order ' Haul vp ! ' he raised aloft in 
air, like Brutus refulgent from the stroke of Csesar, 
his booty. It was handed, of course, to the attor- 
neys, who showed a little female curiosity at first, for 
it was a letter with the seal as yet unbroken, and 
might prove to be some old love-letter of my writing, 
recently sent back to me by the Dead-Letter Office. 



OLASOOW ATHEN^UM. 267 

It still looked frcsli and blooming. So, if there was 
no prize for Glasgow, there might still be an interest- 
ing secret for the benefit of the attorneys. What it 
was, and what each successive haul netted, I will regis- 
ter under the corresponding numbers. 

No. I. — This was a dinner invitation for the 15th of 
February, which I had neglected to open. It was, as 
bill-brokers say, ' coming to maturity,' but luckily not 
past due (in which case you have but a poor remedy), 
for, though twenty days after date, it had still two 
days to run before it could be presented for payment. 
A debate arose with the attorneys — Whether this 
might not do for the Album, in default of any better 
haul ? I argued, for the affirmative, — that, although 
a dinner invitation cannot in reason be looked to for 
very showy writing, its motto being Esse quam videri 
(which is good Latin for — To eat rather than make 
believe to eat, as at ball suppers or Barmecide ban- 
quets), yet, put the case that I should send this invita- 
tion to the Athenaeum, accompanied with a power-of- 
attorney to eat the dinner in my stead — might not 
that solid bonus as an enclosure weigh down the levity 
of the letter considered as a contribution to the Album, 
and take off the edge of the Athenaeum's displeasure ? 
Portia argued contra — that such a thing was impossi- 
ble ; because the Athenaeum had two thousand mouths, 
and would therefore require two thousand dinners ; — 
an argument which I admitted to be showy, but, 
legally speaking, hardly tenable : because the Athe- 
naeum had power to appoint a plenipotentiary — some 
man of immense calibre — to eat the dinner, as repre- 
sentati'^e of the collective two thousand. Portia 
parri(~d this objection by replying, that if the in vita- 



268 SOKTII-EGE ON BEHALF OF THE 

tion had been to a ball there might be something in 
what I said ; but as to a mere dinner, and full fifty 
miles to travel for it from Glasgow, the plenipoten- 
tiary (what<:ver might be his calibre) would decline to 
work so hard for such a trifle. ' Trifle ! * I replied — 
' But, with submission, a dinner twenty-two days after 
date of invitation is not likely to prove a trifle. This, 
however ia^ always the way in which young ladies, 
whether attorneys or not, treat the subject of dinner. 
And as to the fifty miles, the plenipotentiary could go 
in an hour.' ' How ? ' said Portia, sternly. ' Per 
rail,' I replied with equal sternness. What there was 
to laugh at, I don't see ; but at this hot skirmish be- 
tween me and Portia concerning that rather visionary 
person the plenipotentiary, and what he might choose 
to do in certain remote contingencies, and especially 
when the gross reality of ' per rail ' came into collision 
with his aerial essence. Potato-sack began to laugh so 
immoderately, that I was obliged to pull him up by 
giving the word rather imperiously — ' Prepare to 
dip ! ' Before he could obey, I was myself pulled up 
by Portia, with a triumph in her eye that alarmed me. 
She and her sister attorneys had been examining the 
dinner invitation — ' and,' said Portia maliciously to 
me, ' it's quite correct — as you observe there are two 
days good to the dinner hour on the 15th ; " Prepare 
to dine ! " is the signal that should be flying at this 
moment, and in two days more " Dine ! " — only, by 
misfortune, the letter is in the wrong year — it is four 
years old ! ' Oh ! fancy the horror of this ; since, 
besides the mortification from Portia's victory, I had 
perhaps narrowly escaped an indictment from the 
plenipotentiary for sending him what might noto bo 



GLASGOW ATHENiEUAI. 269 

considered a swindle. I hurried to cover my confu- 
sion, by issuing the two orders ' Prepare to dip ! ' and 
'■Dip!' almost in the same breath. No. 1, after all 
the waste of legal learning upon it, had suddenly burst 
like an air-bubble ; and the greater stress of expecta- 
tion, therefore, had now settled on No. 2. With con- 
siderable trepidation of voice, I gave the final order — 
'Haul up ! ' 

No. 2. — It is disagreeable to mention that this haul 
brought up — 'a dun.' Disgust was written upon 
every countenance ; and I fear that suspicion began to 
thicken upon myself — as having possibly (from my 
personal experience in these waters) indicated to our 
young friend where to dredge for duns with most 
chance of success. But I protest fervently my inno- 
cence. It is true that I had myself long remarked 
that part of the channel to be dangerously infested 
with duns. In searching for literary or philosophic 
papers, it would often happen for an hour together 
that I brought up little else than variegated specimens 
of the dun. And one vast bank there was, which I 
called the Goodwin Sands, because nothing within the 
memory of man was ever known to be hauled up from 
it except eternal specimens of the dun — some gray 
with antiquity, some of a neutral tint, some green and 
lively. With grief it was that I had seen our dipper 
shoaling his water towards that dangerous neighbor- 
hood. But what could I do ? If I had warned him 
off, Portia would have been sure to fancy that there 
was some great oyster-bed or pearl-fishery in that 
region ; and all I should have effected by my honesty 
would have been a general conviction of my treachery. 
I therefore became as anxious as everybody else for 



270 SORTILEGE ON BEHALF OF THE 

No. 3, wliich. might set all to rights — miglxt, but 
slight were my hopes that it would, when I saw in 
what direction the dipper's arm was working. Ex- 
actly below that very spot where he had dipped, lay, 
AS stationary as if he had been anchored, a huge and 
ferocious dun of great antiquity. Age had not at all 
softened the atrocious expression of his countenance, 
but rather aided it by endowing him with a tawny 
hue. The size of this monster was enormous, nearly 
two square feet ; and I fancied at times that, in spite 
of his extreme old age, he had not done growing. I 
knew him but too well ; because whenever I happened 
to search in that region of the bath, let me be seeking 
what I would, and let me miss what I might, always I 
was sure to haul up liim whom I never wanted to see 
again. Sometimes I even found him basking on the 
very summit of the papers ; and I conceived an idea, 
which may be a mere fancy, that he came up for air in. 
particular states of the atmosphere. At present he 
was not basking on the surface : better for the Athenae- 
um if he had : for then the young man would have 
been cautious. Not being above, he was certainly 
below, and underneath the very centre of the dipper's 
plunge. Unable to control my feelings, I cried out — 
' Bear away to the right ! ' But Portia protested with 
energy against this intermeddling of mine, as perfidy 
too obvious. ' Well,' I said, ' have it your own way : 
you'll see what will happen.' 

No. 3. — This, it is needless to say, turned out the 
horrid old shark, as I had long chilstened him : I knew 
his vast proportions, and his bilious aspect, the mo- 
ment that tke hauling up commenced, which in his 
case occupied some time. Portia was the more angry, 



GLASGOW AXHEN-EITM. 271 

because slie had thrown away her right to express any 
anger by neutralizing my judicious interference. She 
grew even more angry, because I, though sorry for the 
Athenceum, really could not help laughing Avhen I 
saw the truculent old wretch expanding his huge 
dimensions — all umbered by time and ill-temper — 
under the eyes of the wondering young ladies ; so 
mighty was the contrast between this sallow behemoth 
and a rose-colored little billet of their own. By the 
way, No. 2 had been a specimen of the dulcet dun, 
breathing only zephyrs of request and persuasion ; but 
this No. 3 was a specimen of the polar opposite — the 
dun horrific and Gorgoniau — blowing great guns of 
menace. As ideal specimens in their several classes, 
might they not have a value for the museum of the 
Athenseum, if it has one, or even for the Album 7 
This was my suggestion, but overruled, like everything 
else that I proposed ; and on the ground that Glasgow 
had too vast a conservatory of duns, native and indi- 
genous, to need any exotic specimens. This settled, 
we hurried to the next dip, which, being by contract 
the last, made us all nervous. 

No. 4. — This, alas ! turned out a lecture addressed 
to myself by an ultra-moral friend : a lecture on pro- 
crastination ; and not badly written. I feared that 
something of the sort was coming ; for, at the moment 
of dipping, I called out to the dipper — ' Starboard 
your helm ! you're going smack upon the Goodwins : 
in thirty seconds you'll founder.' Upon this, in an 
agony of fright, the dipper forged off, but evidently 
quite unaware that vast spurs stretched off from the 
Goodwins — shoals and sand-banks — where it was 
mere destruction to sail without a special knowledge 



272 SOETILEGE ON BEHALF OF THE 

of the soundings. He had run upon an ethical sand- 
bank. ' Yet, after all, since this is to be the last dip,* 
said Portia, ' if the lecture is well written, might it 
not be acceptable to the Athenaeum ? ' ' Possibly,' 1 
replied ; ' but it is too personal, besides being founded 
in error from first to last. I could not allow myself 
to be advertised in a book as a procrastinator on prin- 
ciple, unless the Athenaeum would add a postscript 
under its official seal, expressing entire disbelief of the 
accusation; which I have private reasons for thinking 
that the Athenaeum may decline to do.' 

' "Well, then,' said Portia, ' as yeu wilfully rob the 
Athenaeum of No. 4, which by contract is the un- 
doubted property of that body, in fee simple and not 
in fee conditional,' (mark Portia's learning as an at- 
torney,) ' then you are bound to give us a 5th dip ; 
particularly as you've been so treacherous all along.' 
Tears rushed to my eyes at this most unjust assump- 
tion. In agonizing tones I cried out, ' Potato-sack ! 
my friend Potato-sack ! will you quietly listen to this 
charge upon me, that am as innocent as the child un- 
born ? If it is a crime in me to know, and in you not 
to know, where the Goodwins lie, why then, let you 
and me sheer off to the other side of the room, and 
let Portia try if she can do better. I allow her motion 
for a fresh trial. I grant a 5th dip : and the more 
readily, because it is an old saying — that there is 
luck in odd numbers : numero dues impure gaudet ; — 
only I must request of Portio to be the dipper on this 
final occasion.' All the three attorneys blushed a 
rosy red on this unexpected summons. It was one 
thing to criticize, but quite another thing to undertake 
the performance ; and the fair attorneys trembled for 



GLASGOW AXHEN-a:UM. 273 

their professional reputation. Secretly, however, I 
whispered to Potato-sack, ' You'll see now, such is 
female address, that whatever sort of monster they 
haul up, they'll swear it's a great prize, and contrive 
to extract some use from it that may seem to justify 
this application for a new trial.' 

No. 5. — Awful and thrilling were the doubts, fears, 
expectations of us all, when Portia ' prepared to dip,' 
and secondly ' dipped.' She shifted her hand, and 
* ploitcrcd ' amongst the papers for full five minutes. 
I winked at this in consideration of past misfortunes ; 
but, strictly speaking, she had no right to ' ploiter ' for 
more than one minute. She contended that she knew, 
by intuition, the sort of paper upon which ' duns ' 
were written ; and whatever else might come up,, she 
was resolved it should not be a dun. ' Don't be too 
sure,' I said ; and, at last, when she seemed to have 
settled her choice, I called out the usual word of com- 
mand, ^Haul up.' 

' What is it ? ' we said ; ' what's the prize ? ' we de- 
manded, all rushing up to Portia. Guess, reader ; — 
it was a sheet of blank paper ! 

I, for my part, was afraid either to laugh or to cry. 
I really felt for Portia, and, at the same time, for the 
\.thenceum. Yet I had a monstrous desire to laugh 
horribly. But, bless you, reader ! there was no call 
for pity to Portia. With the utmost coolness she 
said, ' Oh ! here is carte blanche for receiving your 
latest thoughts. This is the paper on which you are 
to write an essay for the Athenaeum ; and thus we are 
providentially enabled to assure our client the Athe- 
naeum of something expressly manufactured for the 
occasion, and not an old wreck from the Goodwins. 



274 SOBTILEGE ON BEHALF OF THE 

Fortune loves tte Athenaeum ; and her four blanks at 
starting were only meant to tease that Institution, and 
to enhance the value of her final favor.' ' Ah, in- 
deed ! ' I said in an under tone, ' meant to tease ! there 
are other ladies who understand that little science be- 
side Fortune ! ' However, there is no disobeying the 
commands of Portia ; so I sate down to write a paper 
on Astrology. But, "before beginning, I looked at 
Potato-sack, saying only, ' You see : I told you what 
would happen.' 



ASTROLOGY. 

As my contribution to their Album, I will beg the 
Athenaeum to accept a single thought on this much- 
injured subject. Astrology I greatly respect ; but it 
is singular that my respect for the science arose out of 
my contempt for its professors, — not exactly as a 
direct logical consequence, but as a casual suggestion 
from that contempt. I believe in astrology, but not 
in astrologers ; as to them I am an incorrigible infidel. 
First, let me state the occasion upon which my 
astrologica,l thought arose ; and then, secondly, the 
thought itself. 

When about seventeen years old, I was wandering 
as a pedestrian tourist in North Wales. For some 
little time, the centre of my ramblings (upon which 
I still revolved from all my excursions, whether ellip- 
tical, circular, or zig-zag) was Llangollen in Denbigh- 
shire, or else Rhuabon, not more than a few miles 
distant. One morning I was told by a young married 
"Woman, at whose cottage I had received some kind 



GLASGOW ATHEN^UM. 275 

hospitalities, that an astrologer lived in the neighbor- 
hood. ' What might be his name ? ' Very good Eng- 
lish it was that my young hostess had hitherto spoken ; 
and yet, in this instance, she chose to answer me in 
Welsh. Mochinaha7ite, was her brief reply. I dare 
say that my spelling of the word will not stand Welsh 
criticism; but what can you expect from a man's first 
attempt at Welsh orthography ? I am sure that my 
written word reflects the vocdL word which I heard — 
provided you pronounce the cli as a Celtic guttural ; 
and I can swear to three letters out of the twelve, viz. 
the first, the tenth, and the eleventh, as rigorously cor- 
rect. Pretty well, I think, that, for a mere beginner 
— only seventy-five per cent, by possibility wrong ! 
But what did Mochinahante mean ? For a man might 
as well be anonymous, or call himself X Y Z, as ofier 
one his visiting card indorsed with a name so frightful 
to look at — so shocking to utter — so agonizing to 
spell — as Mochinahante. And that it had a trans- 
latable meaning — that it was not a proper name but 
an appellative, in fact some playful sobriquet, I felt 
certain, from observing the young woman to smile 
whilst she uttered it. My next question drew from 
her — that this Pagan-looking monster of a name 
meant Pi g-in-the- dingle. But really, now, between 
the original monster and this English interpretation, 
there was very little to choose ; in fact the interpreta- 
tion, as often happens, strikes one as the harder to 
understand of the two. ' To be sure it does,' says a 
lady sitting at my elbow, and tormented by a passion 
BO totally unfeminine as curiosity — 'to be sure — very 
much harder ; for Mochina — what-do-you-call-it 7 
might, you know, mean something or other, for any- 



276 SOBTILEGE ON BEHALF OP THE 

thing that you or I could say to the contrary ; but as 
to Pig -in- the- dingle — what dreadful nonsense ! what 
impossible description of an astrologer ! A man that 
— let me see — does something or other about the 
stars : how can he be described as a pig ? pig in any 
sense, you know — pig in any place ? But Pig-in-a- 
dingle ! — why, if he's a pig at all, he must be Pig' 
on-a-steeple, or Pig-on-the-top-of-a-hill, that he may 
rise above the mists and vapors. Now I insist, my 
dear creature, on your explaining all this riddle on the 
spot. You know it — you came to the end of the 
mystery ; but none of us that are sitting here can 
guess at the meaning ; we shall all be ill, if you keep 
us waiting — I've a headach beginning already — so 
say the thing at once, and put us out of torment ! ' 

What's to be done ? I must explain the thing to 
the Athenaeum ; and if I stop to premise an oral ex- 
planation for the lady's separate use, there will be no 
time to save the Glasgow post, which waits for no 
man, and is deaf even to female outcries. By way of 
compromise, therefore, I request of the lady that she 
will follow my pen with her radiant eyes, by which 
means she will obtain the earliest intelligence, and the 
speediest relief to her headach. I, on my part, will 
not loiter, but will make my answer as near to a tele- 
graphic answer, in point of speed, as a rigid metallic 

pen will allow. 1 divide this answer into twc 

heads : the first concerning ' in the dingle,' the second 
concerning '' pig.' My philosophic researches, and a 
visit to the astrologer, ascertained a profound reason 
for describing him as in-the-dingle ; viz. because he 
was in a dingle. He was the sole occupant of a little 
cove amongst the hills — the sole householder ; and 



GLASGOW ATHEN^UM. 277 

SO absolutely such, that if ever any treason should be 
hatched in the dingle, clear it was to my mind that 
Mochinahante would be found at the bottom of it ; if 
ever war should be levied in this dingle, Mochinahante 
must be the sole belligerent ; and if a forced contribu- 
tion were ever imposed upon this dingle, Mochinahante 
(poor man !) must pay it all out of his own pocket. 
The lady interrupts me at this point to say — ' Well, 
I understand all that — that's all very clear. But 
what I want to know about is — Pig- Come to Pig. 
Why Pig ? How Pig 7 In what sense Pig 7 You 
can't have any profound reason, you know, for that.' 

Yes I have ; a very profound reason ; and satisfac- 
tory to the most sceptical of philosophers, viz. that he 
was a Pig. I was presented by my fair hostess to the 
great interpreter of the stars, in person ; for I was 
anxious to make the acquaintance of an astrologer, 
and especially of one who, whilst owning to so rare a 
profession, owned also to the soft impeachment of so 
very significant a name. Having myself enjoyed so 
favorable an opportunity for investigating the reason- 
ableness of that name, Mochinahante, as applied to the 
Denbighshire astrologer, I venture to pronounce it 
unimpeachable. About his dress there was a forlorn- 
ness, and an ancient tarnish or cerugo, which went far 
to justify the name ; and upon his face there sate that 
lugubrious rust (or what medallists technically call 
patina) which bears so costly a value when it is found 
on the coined face of a Syro-Macedonian prince long 
since compounded with dust, but, alas ! bears no value 
at all if found upon the flesh-and-blood face of a living 
philosopher. Speaking humanly, one would have in- 
sinuated that the star-gazer wanted much washing and 



278 SOKTILEGE OH BEHALF OF THE 

Bcouring ; but, astrologically speaking, perhaps ho 
would have been spoiled by earthly waters for his 
celestial vigils. 

Mochinahante was civil enough ; a pig is not neces* 
sarily rude ; and, after seating me in his chair of state, 
he prepared for his learned labors by cross-examina- 
tions as to the day and hour of my birth. The day I 
knew to a certainty ; and even about the Jiour I could 
tell quite as much as ought in reason to be expected 
from one who certainly had not been studying a chro- 
nometer when that event occurred. These points set- 
tled, the astrologer withdrew into an adjoining room, 
for the purpose (as he assured me) of scientifically con- 
structing my horoscope ; but unless the di'awing of 
corks is a part of that process, I should myself incline 
to think that the great man, instead of minding my 
interests amongst the stars and investigating my horo- 
scope, had been seeking consolation for himself in 
bottled porter. Within half-an-hour he returned ; 
looking more lugubrious than ever ; more grim ; 
more grimy (if grime yields any such adjective) ; a 
little more rusty ; rather more patinous, if numisma- 
tists will lend me that word ; and a great deal more in 
want of scouring. He had a paper of diagrams in his 
hand, which of course contained some short-hand 
memoranda upon my horoscope ; but, from its smoki- 
ness, a malicious visitor might have argued a possibility 
that it had served for more customers than myself. Un- 
der his arm he carried a folio book, which (he said) was 
a manuscript of unspeakable antiquity. This he was 
jealous of my seeing ; and before he would open it, as 
if I and the book had been two prisoners at the bar 
suspected of meditating some collusive mischief (such 



OLASaOW ATHEN^XIM. 279 

as tying a cracker to tlie judge's wig), lie separated us 
as ^videly from each other as the dimensions of the 
room allowed. These solemnities finished, we were all 
ready — I, and the folio volume, and Pig-in-the-dingle 
— for our several parts in the play. Mochinahante 
began : — He opened the pleadings in a deprecatory 
tone, protesting, almost with tears, that if anything 
should turn out amiss in the forthcoming revelations, 
it was much against his will ; that he was power- 
less, and could not justly be held responsible for 
any part of the disagreeable message which it might 
be his unhappincss to deliver. I hastened to assure 
him that I was incapable of such injustice ; that I 
should hold the stars responsible for the whole ; by 
nature, that I was very forgiving ; that any little mal- 
ice, which I might harbor for a year or so, should all 
be reserved for the use of the particular constellations 
concerned in the plot against myself; and, lastly, that 
I was now quite ready to stand the worst of their 
thunders. Pig was pleased with this reasonableness ; 
he saw that he had to deal with a philosopher ; and, 
in a more cheerful tone, he now explained that my 
case was msystically contained in the diagrams ; these 
smoke-dried documents submitted, as it were, a series 
of questions to the book ; which book it was — a book 
of unspeakable antiquity — that gave the inflexible 
answers, like the gloomy oracle that it was. But I 
was not to be angry with the book, any more than 

with himself, since ' Of course not,' I replied, m- 

terrupting him, ' the book did but utter the sounds 
which were predetermined by the white and black 
keys struck in the smoky diagrams ; and I could 
no more be angry with the book for speaking what 



280 SOKTILEGE ON BEHALF OF THE 

it conscientiously believed to be the truth tlian with 
a decanter of port wine, or a bottle of porter, for 
declining to yield more than one or two wine-glasses 
of the precious liquor at the moment when I was look- 
ing for a dozen, under a transient forgetfulness, inci- 
dent to the greatest minds, that I myself, ten minutes 
before, had nearly drunk up the whole.' This com- 
parison, though to a critic wide awake it might have 
seemed slightly personal, met with the entire approba- 
tion of Pig-in-the-dingle. A better frame of mind 
for receiving disastrous news, he evidently conceived, 
could not exist or be fancied by the mind of man 
than existed at that moment in myself. He was in a 
state of intense pathos from the bottled porter. / was 
in a state of intense excitement (pathos combined with 
horror) at the prospect of a dreadful lecture on my 
future life, now ready to be thundered into my ears 
from that huge folio of unspeakable antiquity, prompt- 
ed by those wretched smoke-dried diagrams. I be- 
lieve we were in magnetical rapport. Think of that, 
reader ! — Pig and I in magnetical rapport ! Both 
making passes at each other ! What in the world 
would have become of us if suddenly we should have 
taken to somnambulizing ? Pig would have abandoned 
his dingle to me ; and I should have dismissed Pig to 
that life of wandering which must have betrayed the 
unscoured patinous condition of the astrologer to the 
astonished eyes of Cambria : — 

• Stout Glos'ter stood aghast [or might have stood] in speechless 

trance. 
2b arms ! cried Mortimer [or at least might have cried] , and 

coiich'd his quivering lance.' 

But Pig was a greater man than he seemed. He 



GLASGOW ATHEN^XTM. 281 

yielded neither to magnetism nor to bottled porter ^ 
but commenced reading from the black book in the 
most awful tone of voice, and, generally speaking, 
most correctly. Certainly he made one dreadful mis- 
take ; he started from the very middle of a sentence, 
instead of the beginning ; but then that had a truly 
lyrical effect, and also it was excused by the bottled 
porter. The words of the prophetic denunciation, 
from which he started, were these — ' also he [that 
was myself, you understand] shall have red hair.' 
' There goes a bounce,' I said in an under tone ; ' the 
stars it seems, can tell falsehoods as well as other 
people.' ' Also,' for Pig went on without stopping, 
'he shall have seven-and-twenty-children.' Too hor- 
ror-struck I was by this news to utter one word of 
protest against it. ' Also,' Pig yelled out at the top 
of his voice, ' he shall desert them.' Anger restored 
my voice, and I cried out, ' That's not only a lie in 
the stars, but a libel ; and, if an action lay against a 
constellation, I should recover damages.' Vain it 
would be to trouble the reader with all the monstrous 
prophecies that Pig read against me. He read with a 
steady Pythian fury. Dreadful was his voice : dread- 
ful were the starry charges against myself — things 
that I was to do, things that I must do : dreadful was 
the wrath with which secretly I denounced all partici- 
pation in the acts which these wicked stars laid to my 
charge. But this infirmity of good nature besets me, 
that, if a man shows trust and absolute faith in any 
agent or agency whatever, heart there is not in me to 
resist him, or to expose his folly. Pig trusted — oh 
how profoundly ! — in his black book of unspeakable 
antiquity. It would have killed him on the spot to 
24 



282 SORTILEGE ON BEHALE OE THE 

prove that the black book was a hoax, and that he 
himself was another. Consequently, I submitted in 
silence to pass for the monster that Pig, under coer • 
cion of the stars, had pronounced me, rather than part 
in anger from the solitary man, who after all was not 
to blame, acting only in a ministerial capacity, and 
reading only what the stars obliged him to read. I 
rose without saying one word, advanced to the table, 
and paid my fees ; for it is a disagreeable fact to 
record, that astrologers grant no credit, nor even dis- 
coimt upon prompt payment. I shook hands with 
Mochinahante ; we exchanged kind farewells — he 
smiling benignly upon me, in total forgetfulness that 
he had just dismissed me to a life of storms and 
crimes ; I, in return, as the very best benediction that 
I could think of, saying secretly, ' Oh Pig, may the 
heavens rain their choicest soap-suds upon thee ! ' 

Emerging into the open air, I told my fair hostess 
of the red hair which the purblind astrologer had 
obtained for me from the stars, and which, with their 
permission, I would make over to Mochinahante for a 
reversionary wig in his days of approaching baldness. 
But I said not one word upon that too bountiful 
allowance of children with which Moch. had endowed 
me. I retreated by nervous anticipation from that 
inextinguishable laughter which, I was too certain, 
would follow upon her part ; and yet, when we 
reached the outlet of the dingle, and turned round to 
take a parting look of the astrological dwelling, I 
myself was overtaken by fits of laughter ; for sud- 
denly I figured in vision my own future return to this 
mountain recess, with the young legion of twouty- 
aeven children. ' I desert them, the darlings ! ' I 



GLASGOW ATHEN^UM. 283 

exclaimed, ' far from it ! Backed by this filial army, 
I shall feel myself equal to the task of taking ven- 
geance on the stars for the affronts they have put upon 
me through Pig their servant. It will be like the 
return of the Heracleidae to the Peloponnesus. The 
sacred legion will storm the " dingle," whilst I storm 
Pig ; the rising generation will take military posses- 
sion of '' -iyiahante," whilst I deal with " Moch" (which 
I presume to be the part in the long word answering 
to Pig).' My hostess laughed in sympathy with my 
laughter ; but I was cautious of letting her have a 
look into my vision of the sacred legion. We quitted 
the dingle for ever ; and so ended my first visit, being 
also my last, to an astrologer. 

This, reader, was the true general occasion of my 
one thought upon astrology ; and, before I mention it, 
I may add that the immediate impulse drawing my 
mind in any such direction was this : — On walking to 
the table where the astrologer sat, in order to pay my 
fees, naturally I came nearer to the folio book than 
astrological prudence would generally have allowed. 
But Pig's attention was diverted for the moment to 
the silver coins laid before him ; these he reviewed 
with the care reasonable in one so poor, and in a state 
of the coinage so neglected as it then was. By this mo- 
ment of avarice in Pig, I profited so far as to look over 
the astrologer's person, sitting and bending forward fuU 
upon the book. It was spread open, and at a glance I 
saw that it was no MS. but a printed book, printed in 
black-letter types. The month of August stood as a 
rubric at the head of the broad margin ; and below it 
stood some days of that month in orderly succession. 
* So then, Pig,' said I in my thoughts, ' it seems that 



284 SOKTIIiElJE ON BEHALF OF THE 

any person Avliatever, born on any particular day and 
hour of August, is to have the same exact fate as my- 
self. But a king and a beggar may chance thus far to 
agree. And be you assured, Pig, that all the infinite 
variety of cases lying between these two termini diifer 
from each other in fortunes and incidents of life as 
much, though not so notoriously, as king and beggar.' 

Hence arose a confirmation of my contempt for 
astrology. It seemed as if necessarily false — false by 
an a priori principle, viz. that the possible diff'erences 
in human fortunes, which are infinite, cannot be 
measured by the possible differences in the particular 
moments of birth, which are too strikingly finite. It 
strengthened me in this way of thinking, that subse- 
quently I found the very same objection in Macrobius. 
Macrobius may have stolen the idea ; but certainly not 
from me — as certainly I did not steal it from him ; so 
that here is a concurrence of two people independently, 
one of them a great philosopher, in the very same 
annihilating objection. 

Now comes my one thought. Both of us were 
wrong, Macrobius and myself. Even the great phi- 
losopher is obliged to confess it. The objection truly 
valued is — to astrologers, not to astrology. No two 
events ever did coincide in point of time. Every 
event has, and must have, a certain duration ; this 
you may call its breadth ; and the true locus of the 
event in time is the central point of that breadth, 
Avhich never was or will be the same for any two 
aeparate events, though grossly held to be contempo- 
raneous. It is the mere imperfection of our human 
means for chasing the infinite subdivisibilities of time 
which causes us to regard two events as even by possi- 



GLASGOW ATHENJEITM. 285 

bility concurring in their central moments. This im- 
perfection is crushing to the pretensions of astrologers ; 
but astrology laughs at it in the heavens ; and astrol- 
ogy, armed with celestial chronometers, is true ! 

Suffer me to illustrate the case a little : — It is rare 
that a metaphysical difficulty can be made as clear as a 
pikestaff. This can. Suppose two events to occur in 
the same quarter of a minute — that is, in the same 
fifteen seconds ; then, if they started precisely together, 
and ended precisely together, they would not only have 
the same breadth, but this breadth would accurately 
coincide in all its parts or fluxions; consequently, the 
central moment, viz., the 8th, would coincide rigorously 
with the centre of each event. But, suppose that one 
of the two events, A for instance, commenced a single 
second before B the other, then, as we are still suppos- 
ing them to have the same breadth or extension, A 
will have ended in the second before B ends ; and, 
consequently, the centres will be different, for the 8th 
second of A will be the 7th of B. The disks of the 
two events will overlap — A will overlap B at the 
beginning ; B Avill overlap A at the end. Now, go on 
to assume that, in a particular case, this overlapping 
does not take place, but that the two events eclipse 
each other, lying as truly surface to surface as two 
sovereigns in a tight rouleau of sovereigns, or one 
dessert-spoon nestling in the bosom of another ; in 
that case, the 8th or central second will be the centre 
for both. But even here a question will arise as to 
the degree of rigor in the coincidence ; for divide that 
8th second into a thousand parts or sub-moments, and 
perhaps the centre of A will be found to hit the 450th 
■ub-raoment, whilst that of B may hit the 600th. O*" 



286 SOKTILEGE ON BEHALF OF THE 

suppose, again, even this trial surmounted : the two 
harmonious creatures, A and B, running neck and 
neck together, have both hit simultaneously the true 
centre of the thousand sub-moments which lies half- 
way between the 500th and the 501st. All is right 
so far — 'all right behind; ' but go on, if you please; 
subdivide this last centre, which we will call X, into 
a thousand lesser fractions. Take, in fact, a railway 
express-irain of decimal fractions, and give chase to A 
and B ; my word for it that you will come up with 
them in some stage or other of the journey, and arrest 
them in the very act of separating their centres — 
which is a dreadful crime in the eye of astrology ; for, 
it is utterly impossible that the initial moment, or suh- 
moment, or suJ-sMi-moment of A and B should abso- 
lutely coincide. Such a thing as a perfect start was 
never heard of at Doncaster. Now, this severe accu- 
racy is not wanted on earth. Archimedes, it is well 
known, never saw a perfect circle, nor even, with his 
leave, a decent circle ; for, doubtless, the reader knows 
the following fact, viz., that, if you take the most per- 
fect Vandyking ever cut out of paper or silk, by the 
most delicate of female fingers, with the most exquisite 
of Salisbury scissors, upon viewing it through a nii- 
croscope you will find the edges frightfully ragged; 
but, if you apply the same microscope to one of God's 
Vandyking on the corolla or calyx of a fiower, you 
will find it as truly cut and as smooth as a moonbeam. 
We on earth, I repeat, need no such rigorous truth. 
For instance, you and I, my reader, Avant little perhaps 
with circles, except now and then to bore one with an 
augrc in a ship's bottom, when we wish to sink her 
and tc cheat the underwriters ; or, by way of variety, 



OLASGOAV ATHEN^UM. 287 

to cut one with a centre-bit through shop-shutters, in 
order to rob a jeweller; — so toe don't care much 
whether the circumference is ragged or not. But that 
won't do for a constellation ! The stars nentendent 
pas la raiUerie on the subject of geometry. The pen- 
dulum of the starry heavens oscillates truly ; and if 
the Greenwich time of the Empyreum can't be repeated 
upon earth, without an error, a horoscope is as much a 
chimera as the perpetual motion, or as an agreeable 
income-tax. • In fact, in casting a nativity, to swerve 
from the ti'ue centre by the trUlionth of a centillionth 
is as fatal as to leave room for a coach and six to turn 
between your pistol shot and the bull's eye. If you 
haven't done the tiick, no matter how near you've 
come to it. And to overlook this, is as absurd as was 
the answer of that Lieutenant M., who, being asked 
whether he had any connection with another officer of 
the same name, replied — ' Oh yes ! a very close one.' 
' But in what way ? ' ' Why, you see, I'm in the 50th 
regiment of foot, and he's in the 49th : ' walking, in 
fact, just behind him! Yet, for all this, horoscopes 
may be calculated very truly by the stars amongst 
themselves ; and my conviction is — that they are. 
They are perhaps even printed hieroglyphically, and 
published as regularly as a nautical almanac ; only, 
they cannot be re-published upon earth by any mode 
of piracy yet discovered amongst sublunary book- 
sellers. Astrology, in fact, is a very profound, or at 
least a very lofty science ; but astrologers are hum- 
bugs. 

I have finished, and I am vain of my work ; for I 
have accomplished three considerable things : — I 
have floored Macrobius ; I have cured a lady of her 



288 SOKTItEGE ON BEHALF, ETC. 

headache ; and lastly, which is best of all, I have ex- 
pressed my sincere interest in the prosperity of the 
Glasgow Athenaeum. 

But the Glasgow post is mounting, and this paper 
will be lost ; a fact which, amongst all the dangers 
besetting me in this life, the wretched Pig forgot to 
warn me of. 

Feb. 24, 18iS. 



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